#1 - The government’s tax collection agency has not followed

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

HI GGIBA003,

Typically weaken answer choices will attack the hole between the premise(s) and the conclusion. That's what we see happening in this question. The stimulus says that the government has not followed through on its plan to crackdown on corporate income tax evaders because there have been zero audits of corporate taxes completed during the relevant time frame. Our correct answer choice hits the gap between the premise, which talks about completed audits, with the conclusion which talks about audits more generally. There's a difference between conducting audits and completing audits, and that's exactly where the correct answer choice takes us.

Hope that helps!

[g_lawyered]

Hi Rachael,
That does make sense, thank you for clarifying that. This "gap" between the conclusion & evidence that you refer to, is it similar to the technique discussed for Assumption questions- connecting the "rogue terms" to form the assumption? I'm trying to make sense of it all, that way I can improve my technique when practicing Weaken questions on future PTs.
Thanks in advance!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Exactly, GGIBA003.

Part of the reason we recommend reading the stimulus before the question stem is because ultimately, these all require recognizing the same thing. It doesn't matter if the question asks you to weaken, find an assumption, strengthen, or justify. They all require you to recognize where there's a gap in the argument. What is the space between the premise(s) and the conclusion? That's what you need to find in order to answer any of those questions. You can think about weaken questions as asking you to expand that gap in the argument, while justify, assumption, and strengthen all ask you to help stop that gap in one way or another.

Great job noting that!

[g_lawyered]

Thanks for your response Rachael.
So going forward with Weaken questions, the technique is to weaken/make less likely either the conclusion or the assumptions, correct?
Thank in advance

[Robert Carroll]

GGIBA003,

We always want to make the conclusion less likely for a Weaken question. If that comes about by directly attacking the conclusion or by undermining the premises in such a way that the conclusion is less likely, then that's a successful answer.

Robert Carroll

[g_lawyered]

Hi Robert,
Thanks for response. So to make sure I understand the different type of ways to Weaken an argument, there are 3 ways.
1) weaken the direct conclusion, 2) weaken the assumption between conclusion & premise, and 3) weaken the premise (support given for conclusion). Is that correct?

Thanks in advance!

[Robert Carroll]

GGIBA003,

Weakening the conclusion is the goal. However that is accomplished is fine.

In #1, I think there's a potential for confusion between "weaken the direct conclusion" and "weaken the conclusion directly". ALL ways to weaken the argument weaken the conclusion. Not all of them do it directly. So a more clear expression may be:

1. Weaken the conclusion directly
2. Weaken the conclusion indirectly by weakening an unstated assumption
3. Weaken the conclusion indirectly by weakening a premise

We have to be careful that, if doing 2 or 3, weakening the assumption or premise does weaken the conclusion. There are ways to weaken a premise that WON'T weaken the conclusion, for instance, and thus wouldn't succeed as answers for Weaken questions. So, all of these methods to weaken an argument are subject to the requirement that they weaken the conclusion.

Robert Carroll

[g_lawyered]

Robert,
Thanks for clarifying that up. Can you give an example or where in Lesson Book/Resources I can find a weaken question that demonstrates, when adding a premise to the conclusion, it DOESN'T weaken the argument? That is how you mentioned, there are premises that do weaken and premises that DON'T weaken. An example of a premise that DOESN'T weaken the conclusion.
Thanks for your help!

[Robert Carroll]

GGIBA003,

Right here: viewtopic.php?f=683&t=9155

Answer choices (A) and (B) provide evidence that the reported deaths systematically mismatched actual deaths. So they're weakening the premises in the argument, because they're showing the premises to be unreliable indicators of virulence. But the way they weaken the premises actually strengthens the case for CXC's increasing virulence. In short, those two answers weaken the premises but strengthen the conclusion, so they're wrong answers for that Weaken question.

This very question is actually in Lesson 3, Question 6 in the Weaken question set in the PowerScore LSAT Course Book.

Robert Carroll

[g_lawyered]

Thank you for that explanation Robert. Any more examples of this type I can practice?