#6 - Skeletal remains of early humans indicate clearly that

[moshei24]

I hope you don't mind if I jump in here - I skimmed through most of the previous dialogue.

In your last question, you mention causal indicators. The fact of the matter is that you do NOT need a causal indicator for there to be causal reasoning. The same goes for conditional reasoning - indicators are NOT necessary. The point of an indicator is that it being there makes it more apparent that the reasoning is there.

If I say, "riding roller coasters cause people's heartbeat to rise - therefore riding the roller coaster caused this person's heartbeat to rise," it's clearly causal reasoning (because the premise says so), and the causal indicator there, "caused," makes this very obvious. But let's say I say, "riding roller coasters cause people's heartbeat to rise - hence, after riding the roller coaster the person's heartbeat rose." Can I no longer say that there's causal reasoning in this case? That's where the trickiness comes in. It's a little less explicit about the fact that the roller coaster caused it in this case. Since there's nothing there explicitly stating that the roller coaster caused the person's heartbeat to rise, I can't say for sure that it was a cause and effect case - maybe it was just a coincidence. But implicitly, it would seem like it was a cause and effect case.

If I asked you to weaken either case, how would you do so? If I asked you to strengthen each case, how would you do so? I know that I would probably weaken or strengthen each case in the same way. To weaken it, I would try to blame something else for the increased heartbeat or I would say that someone else went on the roller coaster and didn't have an increase in heartbeat. To strengthen it, I would show another case where someone else had an increased heartbeat after riding the roller coaster or rule out another cause. But you see that those would work in either case.

What's a required assumption in this case? You could have defender assumption that would say that X didn't cause the increased heart rate. Or you could have a supporter assumption that says that the roller coaster caused the heartbeat to rise. The second one would be asked in the case where it didn't mention explicitly (in the premise) that the roller coaster caused the increased heart rate. Keep in mind that if the conclusion tells you it's causal reasoning, you could weaken that case much easier than if the premise says it.

I'm going to stop my rant now, and let you read that over. Though, if you have any follow up questions or questions about this post, feel free to ask more!

-Moshe

[Jon Denning]

powerguy - to answer your specific post about the diet/cavities, first off I think Nikki's original reply explains the idea and the question itself really well, so I'm going to be brief and hopefully avoid too much redundancy.

Secondly, you haven't really reversed anything argumentatively. A reversal would be if you said it has been observed that ancestors ate different foods than we eat, and the cause for that dietary difference was due to them having fewer cavities (as in, "they had better teeth so they ate foods we, with our weaker/cavity-prone teeth, can't eat"). That's a reversal of the original "dietary differences led to them having fewer cavities."

Regardless, language like "caused" or not, causality should be pretty easy to spot! What you're seeing is simply causal relationships in the form of an author's assumptions (implied, non-explicit beliefs). How can I tell it's causal without indicators? Well just think about it: the author clearly believes some thing about the diet difference is the reason for the cavity difference. And when one thing is the reason that another thing happened, that's causality. As Nikki puts it, when one thing is given to EXPLAIN another thing, as in one thing is the reason why another thing is the way it is, that's causal reasoning.

Broader note: PLEASE don't overthink this stuff. Same as for your post about the specific quantities implied by various statements (http://forum.powerscore.com/lsat/viewto ... 6098#p6098), the LSAT really doesn't require anywhere near that level of analysis, and you're going to drive yourself crazy trying to take things to that degree of minutiae! (trust me on this, I've tried it myself and it's a fool's errand)

Just know the basic idea behind what makes a relationship causal (regardless of specific wording used), be able to determine which term is cause and which is effect, and understand the extreme limitations of causality as used on the LSAT and how to affect it, and you'll be perfectly fine come test day

JD

[Dave Killoran]

Broader note: PLEASE don't overthink this stuff. Same as for your post about the specific quantities implied by various statements (http://forum.powerscore.com/lsat/viewto ... 6098#p6098), the LSAT really doesn't require anywhere near that level of analysis, and you're going to drive yourself crazy trying to take things to that degree of minutiae! (trust me on this, I've tried it myself and it's a fool's errand)

Let me second this advice! There's a natural tendency to want to make everything as black-and-white as possible, but this tendency is actually counterproductive (you go down the rabbit hole and never really return to the bigger picture meaning). The LSAT (or any standardized test) doesn't want to a create a question that takes 8-10 minutes to figure out during the test, and so at this atomic level of analysis, we've gone well beyond what we need to be doing to resolve the problem. In a similar vein, the more hypotheticals we create for discussion, the further afield from the the actual test wording they tend to be, until we reach a point where we are debating language structures that wouldn't appear on the exam. You'll also drive yourself nuts trying to work out things the test makers never will use

Thanks!

[voodoochild]

Experts,

While reviewing my notes, I am a bit confused about this question. I see two different arguments in this question. Here's my understanding:

Premise: Early humans had fewer dental problems than we do
Conclusion : Their diet was likely different from ours.

Reasoning#1
I could think of this as an "explanation" type argument wherein I know the fact that our ancestors had a fewer dental problems which influenced their food choices: they could easily eat food for which we would use a grinder, or say they didn't require knife to cut food. For instance, Sugarcane - not many people can chew sugarcane. (Why am I thinking so ? the conclusion is about a different diet -it doesn't say better or worse diet)

Essentially, the number of dental problems ====influenced=====> diet

OR

Reasoning#2
I could think of this argument as :
Reasoning #2
Because of different diet, our ancestors had less tooth problems.
i.e diet :====influenced=====> tooth problem

Now the problem is that Reasoning#1 and Reasoning#2 are 180 degree opposite. The conclusion is tricky because it doesn't have any 'causal' indicator.

What am I missing here? I am really confused.

Please help me.

Thanks
Voodoo child

[Nikki Siclunov]

This is an "explanation" type argument indeed: it contains causal reasoning.

Premise: Our ancestors had fewer dental problems than we have.
Conclusion: Their diet was very different from ours.

The conclusion seeks to explain why they had fewer dental problems: because they ate a diet that is different from ours. Diet and dental problems correlate, and the author uses that correlation to support a causal argument:

(Cause) Diet (Effect) Dental Problems

We know this to be the correct causal relationship because of how the argument is structured: the premise presents a phenomenon which the conclusion seeks to explain. It is exceptionally rare that the premises would describe a cause, and the conclusion provide an effect. Your first line of reasoning would require reversing logical structure of the argument, whereby the premise stated "our ancestors ate a very different diet from ours," which the author takes as evidence that "they must have had fewer dental problems than we do" (which would be a conclusion).

Let me know if this clears things up!

[voodoochild]

Nikki,
Thanks for your reply. Just to make sure that I have understood your reply: -

If the argument provides two correlations in the premise and the conclusion, then the argument must be describing an implicit cause of the correlation mentioned in the premise.

However, if the argument intends to say that (Say) :

Premise : Meteorite collided with Earth 200 million years ago.
Conclusion (no causal indicator): Most likely, there was an ice-age about 199 million years ago.

Then, I believe that the conclusion will always use an explicit causal indicator, such as :
Conclusion (with causal indicator) : Most likely, there was an ice-age about 199 million years because of the collision.

Am I correct? Please let me know.

Thanks

[Nikki Siclunov]

That's right; when in doubt, use your common sense. In the example you provide, the conclusion is trying to infer a result and we would expect that a causal reasoning indicator be provided. That said, keep in mind this is a rather unusual logical structure. A typical LSAT argument would be:

Premise : There was an ice-age about 200 million years ago.
Conclusion: Most likely, a meteorite must have collided with Earth 200 million years ago.

The vast majority of these questions will present the cause (i.e. explanation) in the conclusion. The example you provided, on the other hand, had a conclusion that simply stated a probable consequence of a given past event. The causation in it has nothing to do with "explaining" why something occurred. All you're saying is, "A happened, so B is likely to happen as well."

Make sense?

[voodoochild]

thanks Nikki!