Recognizing Conclusions Without Indicators

Law Services says you are expected to possess, in their words, “a college-level
understanding of widely used concepts such as argument, premise, assumption, and
conclusion.”
Many of the arguments we have encountered up until this point have had
conclusion indicators to help you recognize the conclusion. And, many of the
arguments you will see on the LSAT will also have conclusion indicators. But
you will encounter arguments that do not contain conclusion indicators.
Following is an example:
The best way of eliminating traffic congestion will not be easily found.
There are so many competing possibilities that it will take millions of
dollars to study every option, and implementation of most options
carries an exorbitant price tag.
An argument such as the above can be difficult to analyze because no indicator
words are present. How then, would you go about determining if a conclusion
is present, and if so, how would you identify that conclusion? Fortunately,
there is a fairly simple trick that can be used to handle this situation, and any
situation where you are uncertain of the conclusion (even those with multiple
conclusions, as will be discussed next).
Aside from the questions you can use to identify premises and conclusions
(described earlier in this chapter), the easiest way to determine the conclusion
in an argument is to use the Conclusion Identification MethodTM:
Take the statements under consideration for the conclusion and place
them in an arrangement that forces one to be the conclusion and the
other(s) to be the premise(s). Use premise and conclusion indicators to
achieve this end. Once the pieces are arranged, determine if the
arrangement makes logical sense. If so, you have made the correct
identification. If not, reverse the arrangement and examine the
relationship again. Continue until you find an arrangement that is
logical.
Let us apply this method to the argument at the top of this page. For our first
arrangement we will make the first sentence the premise and the second
sentence the conclusion, and supply indicators (in italics):
Because the best way of eliminating traffic congestion will not be
easily found, we can conclude that there are so many competing
possibilities that it will take millions of dollars to study every option,
and implementation of most options carries an exorbitant price tag.
Does that sound right? No. Let us try again, this time making the first sentence
the conclusion and the second sentence the premise:
Because there are so many competing possibilities that it will take
millions of dollars to study every option, and implementation of most
options carries an exorbitant price tag, we can conclude that the best
way of eliminating traffic congestion will not be easily found.
Clearly, the second arrangement is far superior because it makes sense. In
most cases when you have the conclusion and premise backward, the
arrangement will be confusing. The correct arrangement always sounds more
logical.