Hi, Gurwinder,
Justify questions can indeed be challenging. They require a degree of precision that can sometimes present a challenge. Let's break them down structurally.
The stimulus in a Justify question contains an argument. There will be a conclusion and premises. The premises will provide insufficient support for the conclusion. In other words, there will always be a flaw or gap in these arguments.
However, unlike many other questions that feature flawed stimuli—Strengthen, Weaken, Assumption—the arguments for Justify questions will contain exactly one flaw.
In other words, the premises will be
almost sufficient to guarantee a valid conclusion, but one gap remains. Often this gap will be rather glaring. In Justify questions, there is often a significant, clear jump between the premises and the conclusion.
Let's look at an example. Page 4-27 Question 3 contains an example of a Justify question that contains a clear gap.
- Premise: This stamp has a printing error.
Premise: Rarity, age, and condition determine a stamp's value.
Premise: This stamp is old and in good condition.
Conclusion: This stamp is valuable.
So we're almost there; we can almost conclude that we have a valuable stamp, but there's something missing. Notice what syncs up so far in the argument.
- Premise: This stamp has a printing error.
Premise: Rarity, age, and condition determine a stamp's value.
Premise: This stamp is old and in good condition.
Conclusion: This stamp is valuable.
The qualities sufficient to guarantee a stamp's value are rarity, age, and condition. Notice how we've already accounted for age and condition, colored red. What's missing?
- Premise: This stamp has a printing error.
Premise: Rarity, age, and condition determine a stamp's value.
Premise: This stamp is old and in good condition.
Conclusion: This stamp is valuable.
There is a broken connection. The author appears to want to connect printing errors with rarity (colored green). However, the author has not made this connection. The correct answer will connect printing errors with rarity, as in the correct answer, B.
Formally, this argument could be represented thus:
- Premise: Stamp
Printing Error
Premise: Rare & Old & Good Condition Valuable
Premise: Stamp Old & Good Condition
Conclusion: Stamp Valuable
This is important: Formally, on a Justify question, our job is to connect the left hand (sufficient) side of the conclusion with the right hand (necessary) side of the conclusion.
In other words, look at the conclusion. What's on the left? Stamp.
Where do we need to go on the right? Valuable.
How far along are we towards making this argument valid? Let's line it up:
- Stamp Old & Good Condition & [???Rare???] Valuable
If we were able to say:
- Stamp Rare
Then we would be all set. How can we do that? We can do it using the one other thing we know about the stamp: it has a printing error. Going from left to right, we need something like this:
- Stamp Valuable Rare
We could then put it all together to get:
- Stamp Old & Good Condition & Rare Valuable
How can you do this on the test? If you have a Justify question, do the following:
- Zero in on the conclusion. Get it crystal clear.
- Where are we beginning in the conclusion? Where do we want to go?
- The starting conditions, the facts in the premises, are where we begin. All these facts and premises are on the left hand side.
- The conclusion is the terminus of our argument. It is the right hand side, where we wish to end up.
- Consider making notes for these questions if it helps you keep track of the logic.
- Assess the facts you have.
- Identify the missing link.
- Prephrase the connection you wish to make.
- Work through the answers, asking yourself whether they (1) match your prephrase OR (2) would combine with the other information in the premises to guarantee a valid conclusion.
Work through this process, repeating Justify questions from the lesson and homework, until you are clear on this logical structure and approach.
I hope this helps!
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