Principle Support vs Principle Strengthen

[andrewgong01]

Hi

I am a bit confused with the Principle Support Style question.

On some questions it is noted as a principle-strengthen (e.g. https://www.manhattanprep.com/lsat/foru ... php?t=6629) whereas in the strategy guide they are all noted under principle support for the same question phrasing (Chapter 7 Drills from the 5th Edition). Although this does not seem to really have caused me trouble so far in practice but are Principle Support questions treated as both"sufficient assumptions" when we have that "perfect" answer choice but if a SA answer choice does not exist we go more so with a NA style/"strengthen" answer choice that strengthens the reasoning of the argument? Is that why sometimes we see questions marked as "principle strengthen" ?

[ohthatpatrick]

There is no difference between those types. There are just teachers (like me), that forget what name we settled on.

I also sometimes write is as "Principle-Justify", because the most common form is:
which principle, if valid, most justifies the argument"

But most justifies / most supports / most strengthens all mean the same thing.

You're correct that the vast majority of these feel like Sufficient Assumption, in that the correct answer is usually a conditional statement, a Bridge idea connecting Premise language on the left to Conclusion language on the right.

But other times it's not phrased in a conditional way, and it simply Strengthens the argument (even still, it usually is a Bridge idea, in that it contains a nod to the Premise and a nod to the Conclusion).

The question stem only promises that the correct answer will Strengthen, so we don't need to ever hold it to a higher standard than that.

[andrewgong01]

I was doing the review problems under NA at the back of the course guide book (Supplemental LR Sets) and
I noticed under NA there were many questions phrased as "The politician's recommendation most closely conform to which of the following principles" (E.g. Test 58 Sec 1 Q23 or Page 230 of the Green LSAT book), when it says conform is that just another way to say this is a NA question because we are not coming up with a new principle (like Principle Support and Principle Strengthen and Principe Justifies) to bridge a gap; rather we just want to say what is the implied principle that bridges the gap?

Is it basically saying that say we have a Principle Justify question and we insert the correct answer choice into the stimulus, then in Principle NA Question (what principle conform) our answer would be the correct answer choice from a Principle Justify?

Do you think knowing the difference between these Principle NA and Principle Justify/Strengthen/Support makes a difference like in certain assumption questions where in a NA question one of the trap incorrect answer choice is an extreme statement that would be correct if it was a SA question?

[ohthatpatrick]

Great questions.

We tend to think of
Principle Support = Strengthen .... (but they feel more like Suff Assump b/c the correct answer is usually a conditional bridge ideas)
Principle Conform = Necessary Assumption

On one Principle Conform question, it WAS the case that a tempting trap answer went overboard. So you should use that same conservative sense of 'necessity' we use on Necessary Assumption.

But for the most part, they are the same:
FIND CORE.
PREPHRASE, "IF premise idea, THEN conclusion idea"
LOOK FOR THAT (beware of negations/reversals)

[AbeT815]

https://www.manhattanprep.com/lsat/foru ... 17646.html


In that link they say that this is a principle support type question. So could "closely conforms to" be an additional quantifier for this question type?

[ohthatpatrick]

No, "closely conforms" is a slightly different set of instructions than Principle Support.

We're just categorizing it as PS because we don't want to overcomplicate students' worlds with excessive taxonomy. From what we've seen, there is almost never a detriment to thinking of these the same way you would Principle-Support.

The only difference between THIS question stem's instructions and that of Principle Support is that HERE we would not be allowed to go overboard: an excessively extreme principle probably wouldn't most conform to the reasoning.

But, as I was saying, we haven't actually seen them test this distinction more than once, so we're just conflating Principle-Conform (rare) with Principle-Support (common), since they practically feel/function the same way.