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Integrate initial conclusion

SPEAKER: Argument analysis would be a lot easier if people gave their arguments in standard form, with premises and conclusions flagged in an obvious way. But people don't usually talk this way or write this way. Sometimes the conclusion of an argument is obvious, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes the conclusion is buried or implicit, and we have to reconstruct the argument based on what's given. Well, it's not always obvious how to do this. In this week's tutorial, we're going to look at some principles that will help us identify premises and conclusions and put natural language arguments in standard form. This is a very important critical thinking skill in general, but it's also one that is required to answer many questions on the LSAT. Here's an argument-- abortion is wrong because all human life is sacred. Question-- which is the conclusion, abortion is wrong or all human life is sacred? For most of us, the answer is clear. Abortion is wrong is the conclusion, and all human life is sacred is the premise. How do we know this? Well, two things are going on. First, we are consciously intentionally reading for the argument, and when we do this, we're asking ourselves what claim are we being asked to believe or accept, what other claims are being offered as reasons to accept that claim? Second, we recognize the logical significance of that word "because." Because is what we call an indicator word, a word that indicates the logical relationship of claims that come before or after it. In this case, it indicates that the claim following it is being offered as a reason to accept the claim before it. So, rewriting this argument in standard form it looks like this. All human life is sacred. Therefore, abortion is wrong. At this point, we could start talking about whether this is a good argument or not. That's not really the point of this tutorial. Right now, we're more concerned with identifying premises and conclusions and getting the logical structure of an argument right. Here are some key words or phrases that indicate a conclusion-- therefore, so, hence, thus, it follows that, as a result, consequently, and, of course, there are others. They argument on the right gives an example using so. It's flu season and you work with kids, so you should get a flu shot. Now keywords like this make it much easier to identify conclusions, but not all arguments have keywords that flag it. Some arguments have no indicator words of any kind. In these cases, you have to rely on your ability to analyze context and read for the argument. Here's a more complex argument that illustrates this point. We must reduce the amount of money we spend on space exploration. Right now, the enemy is launching a massive military build-up, and when we need the additional money to purchase military equipment to match the anticipated increase in the enemy's strength. Notice that there are no indicator...