Q18 - In order to determine automobile

[shirando21]

why is B the answer?

Does YET always introduce a conclusion?

I know the sentence "After all....." was to prove "Yet these.....", but it was hard for me to say this is the main conclusion of the argument.

Please help to analyze.

[ohthatpatrick]

Good question.

BUT / YET / HOWEVER are super important trigger words, but they can introduce a Conclusion or a Premise.

They (almost) always indicate that the previous idea was a counterpoint.

Consider these simple fake arguments:
Many people believe that chocolate is bad for you. But they're wrong. After all, chocolate has antioxidants that attack free radicals.

vs.
Many people believe that chocolate is bad for you. But chocolate has antioxidants that attack free radicals. So, these people are wrong.

This is the exact same argument, just structured 2 different ways.

The 1st example went
- COUNTERPOINT
- but/yet/however CONCLUSION
- PREMISE

The 2nd went
- COUNTERPOINT
- but/yet/however PREMISE
- CONCLUSION

So you can see how but/yet/however just means we're about to hear an important author idea. However, we'll still need to use our wits (and any trigger words, such as "after all" or "so") to figure out whether the but/yet/however introduces the conclusion or the premise.

What is really important and awesome to know is that a little more than 50% of all Main Conclusion / Role of the Claim problems will use BUT/YET/HOWEVER to introduce the conclusion.

Think about it: in these questions, the test writers are basically testing you on your ability to find the conclusion. They don't want to make it TOO easy, so they're not going to give you obvious conclusions (last sentences, prefaced by THUS/THEREFORE/HENCE, etc.)

Instead, they use more complicated argument structures such as putting the Conclusion in the first sentence and then letting the supporting ideas follow ... or, the structure we just looked at:
COUNTERPOINT -- but/yet/however CONCLUSION -- PREMISE.

For Q18, the easiest way to know that the "yet" sentence was a conclusion is that the following sentence begins with "after all".

ANY time you see "after all", you KNOW the previous sentence was a conclusion.

(in tricky problems, the previous sentence might only be a subsidiary conclusion, not the main conclusion, but STILL a conclusion)

In this argument, there's no danger of any other conclusion. The first two sentences just read like background facts. The only persuasive reasoning going on is in the last two sentences, and the "after all" indicates that the last sentence is supporting the second-to-last sentence.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have further questions.