#19 - Educator: It has been argued that our professional

[lsatstudy2023]

I really appreciate how helpful these forums always are!!

After reading all of these explanations, I have come to understand how to handle these "reasoning" questions e.g., weakens the reasoning, justifies the reasoning, etc. (please correct me if I am wrong). When dealing with these questions, you are meant to deal with them from the author's REASONING i.e., the author is making an assumption, and that needs to be the basis of your answer.
For example:- MR Z is a bad professor because he does not hold office hours and a good professor who cares for his students would take time out to occasionally meet with them to address their concerns - If I had a question that says justify the reasoning, it will be focused on this idea that for a professor to be seen as good he needs to show his student he cares; If I had a weaken the reasoning question on the other hand, I would not just be focused on weakening the conclusion that MR Z is a bad professor or that he does not hold office hours, rather I'll be trying to weaken the author's reasoning that just because a professor does not hold office hours means he is a bad one.

Please correct me if I am wrong on this; Thank you!!!

[lsatstudy2023]

been

Also don't get me wrong, I understand that in the end it all connects to the premise and eventually the conclusion; I just think it's easier to handle these questions from the reasoning itself and allow the ripple effects to play out on the conclusion because it will.

[Luke Haqq]

Hi lsatstudy2023!

You comment,

I have come to understand how to handle these "reasoning" questions e.g., weakens the reasoning, justifies the reasoning, etc. (please correct me if I am wrong). When dealing with these questions, you are meant to deal with them from the author's REASONING i.e., the author is making an assumption, and that needs to be the basis of your answer.

It's important to separate assumption questions from the rest. For example, a weakening question might not involve any assumption at all. With assumption/justify/strengthen questions, the correct answer choice will fill in gaps or potential gaps in the reasoning--in this respect, the correct answer choices all help the stimulus. But only assumption questions address assumptions on which the argument depends.