Strengthening Partial Cause Arguments

[cmorris32]

Hi PowerScore!

I am working on Strengthening questions with Causal Reasoning and I am kind of confused about how to strengthen questions with Advanced Causal Reasoning (ie: possible/probable, likelihood, partial/multi cause).

I was thinking that the main ways to strengthen these arguments would be:
1. Show the stated relationship is not reversed
2. Show a statistical problem/data issue did not occur

I have a couple of specific questions...
- I'm thinking that eliminating the possibility of an alternate cause and to show that if there is no cause, there will be no effect would not work for advanced causal reasoning because there could be multiple causes. Is this correct?
- If an answer choice raised a possible 3rd cause, would that strengthen the argument?
- Are strengthen questions with advanced causal reasoning common on the LSAT?
- If the conclusion of an argument says it is likely to occur, are there specific ways to strengthen that causal argument? (Ex: Dec 2010 Section 2 #2)

Any information you could give me regarding advanced causal reasoning in strengthen questions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!!

Caroline

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Caroline,

The specifics of what will work to strengthen the type of "less than absolute" (or partial/multi-cause) causal conclusions you're focused on here are going to vary a little from question to question and will be highly impacted by the specific language of the conclusion. It won't be possible in this one little post to cover all the "ins and outs" that might be relevant, but I'd encourage you not to eliminate possibilities for strengthening too readily or too absolutely. The two ways to strengthen you identified certainly are possibilities in this context, but some of the others could be as well, depending on the nuances of the question.

Take, for example, the question you mentioned from December 2010. If the answer fully eliminated another potential cause of long life (or even if it fully eliminated a potential third cause of both), then that would make it somewhat more likely that the stated causal relationship holds. This could be the correct Strengthen answer, assuming no other answer did anything more to boost the conclusion. The "cause present, effect present" scenario (or the "no cause, no effect" scenario) could also work for a "likelihood" conclusion like this one, so long as the answer choice states something more than a single example. In the correct answer (answer choice E) to the December 2010 question, the answer choice presents a "cause present, effect present" scenario. But it is presented in a way that is not just one single example (a single example wouldn't help here, because we know the author thinks single counterexamples are possible), but rather that is "nearly all" examples. This boosts the likelihood language of the conclusion, in a way that a single example could not.

I wouldn't say Strengthen questions with these types of advanced causal conclusion are common, meaning that I'm not sure you could find one on every single section of logical reasoning. But with the increasing inclination of the test makers to avoid "formulaic" questions (that are subject to predetermined formulaic approaches), I'd say you could anticipate something like this occurring, and make sure you keep your eyes peeled for that style of question as you practice the most recent tests!

I hope this helps!

Jeremy