The Fundamentals of Argumentation

Triple Review: Conquer the LSAT Through Spaced Repetition and Analysis While Building Motivation

Welcome to Triple Reviews series on LSAT fundamentals. I'm Jake Feldman, and today, we're going to be talking about the fundamentals of argumentation.

What is an argument? When we hear that word, most of us think of a fight or a disagreement, but “argument” can mean a number of things. If we remove any sort of emotional element of debate, arguments are designed to find the truth of an idea through the introduction of agreed-upon facts and rules that tell us what those facts mean.

So, an argument is not necessarily a disagreement; in fact, often it doesn't even need to involve two or more people. An argument is simply an idea put forth meant to persuade an audience.

So why do you, an LSAT test taker, care? The LSAT, most evidently on the Logical Reasoning section, bases its questions on the concept of argumentation. Most LR questions present an argument, what LSAC refers to as a main conclusion, then attempt to justify the validity of that conclusion by presenting some form of evidence, called a premise for our purposes. Now, I say "attempt to justify" because the majority of those questions do not, in fact, present valid arguments; they're flawed in at least one way, and your job will be to identify that flaw. But more on that in another video.

So, job one for any test taker is to read the paragraph presented and analyze it. What is the proposed conclusion? What sort of evidence is given to support it? For now, let's work with valid arguments. Once we can analyze the correct forms, the flawed ones will be all the more obvious.

So, how do we divide up the contents of a paragraph?

Luckily, Aristotle gave us a really great system for this way back in 350 BC or so. There is the Conclusion, which we already know is the idea we're trying to convince our readers of; there is the Minor Premise, which is a fact we know about the subject of the conclusion; and there is the Major Premise, which is a rule or principle we know that relates to the predicate of the conclusion.

Apologies for the technical grammar language. The subject of a sentence is the person or concept that is doing the action, while the predicate is the action itself, along with whatever the action results in or is pointed at. For instance, take the sentence: "Jake eats a hamburger." Jake is the subject since he's doing the eating, and "eats a hamburger" is the predicate since "eats" is the action (the verb) and "a hamburger" is the thing being eaten (the object).

Let's do one more, you first this time. Take this sentence: "Michael will positively affect his LSAT score." Take a second and try to figure out which part is the subject and which part is the predicate.

[PAUSE]

Since the verb is "will affect," we can ask ourselves who will affect, who will do the affecting? The answer, of course, is Michael, so Michael is the subject. Therefore, the rest of the sentence is the predicate.

Now, for those who thought that the subject might be his LSAT score, consider this: the LSAT score is the thing being affected, not the thing doing the affecting.

So, now that we know how to parse the parts of a conclusion sentence, we know what we're looking for in the minor and major premises. The minor premise should be some fact or facts about Michael: what he did, who he is. The major premise should be some principle or rule that tells us when we know that an LSAT score will be positively affected. And critically, in order for this to be a valid argument, that fact and that principle must overlap.

So, a valid argument could look like this: "Michael will study argumentation, and since anyone who studies argumentation will positively affect their LSAT scores, Michael will positively affect his LSAT score."

Confused as to how to find these parts? Well, here's the way I like to think of it: The conclusion is always the answer to the question, "What are you trying to say? What are you trying to tell me?" Picture yourself on the debate stage and try to sum up in one phrase what you want the audience to believe. That is your conclusion.

The minor premises follow on with the answer to, "Oh really? Prove it. You believe that thing, narrator? What evidence do you have?" The major premise will then be the answer to, "Okay, but why does that mean the conclusion is true? So, what about your evidence? Why is it relevant to the conclusion you're aiming for?"

What are you trying to say? Well, I'm trying to say that Michael will positively affect his LSAT score.

Oh, really? Prove it. Well, Michael studying argumentation.

Why does that mean your conclusion is true? Well, anyone who studies argumentation positively affects his LSAT score, silly.

So as we said earlier, this is an introduction to the valid form of an argument. Most arguments on the LSAT fall short of that mark, but to be able to understand how and why those arguments are flawed, you first have to know what valid looks like.

We hope this will begin your journey toward more confident and efficient analysis of logical reasoning on the LSAT. Thanks for watching.