PrepTest 156

Flawed

Identify the conclusion Identify the premises Make sure the premises support the identified conclusion, and that the identified conclusion does not support anything else in the passage Find the answer choice that restates the conclusion

Our job is straightforward on Main Point questions: find the main conclusion the author wants to convey. When searching for main conclusions, it helps to look for words associated with conclusions — like "therefore," "hence," and "thus" — or "shift" words — like "however," "but," and "nevertheless." Authors often use these words to introduce conclusions. In this case, many features point to different statements as the conclusion. The last sentence begins with "Thus," a clear and obvious conclusion word. The "shift" word "But" appears at the beginning of the sentence. That sentence also disputes another claim — one made by Santayana — a characteristic many conclusions share. Moreover, the third sentence begins with "For," which usually signals that the previous sentence is a conclusion. Finally, the third sentence is a two-parter with the word "since" at the beginning. That usually means the part that follows "since" is a premise, and the other part is the conclusion. For those counting at home, there are three claims that are possible conclusions: "we should not follow [Santayana's] advice"; "none of the crises we now face are the same as those our ancestors faced"; "studying history never enables one to avoid mistakes of the past." Of course, "we should not follow [Santayana's] advice" doesn't mean anything by itself. Let's fill in the details by inserting Santayana's advice. Santayana recommends studying history to avoid the mistakes of the past. If we shouldn't follow his advice, that means we shouldn't study history to avoid the mistakes of the past. When we have multiple possible conclusions, we can often use the "Why?" Test to determine the direction of support. To use the "Why?" Test, we'll ask, "Why is it true that ..." and insert one of the possible conclusions. Then, we'll say "Because ..." and insert one of the other possible conclusions. If that makes sense, then the "Why?" part is a conclusion that's supported by the other statement. If the initial framing doesn't make sense, we'll reverse the possible conclusions. So, let's start with the first and second possible conclusions. "Why is it true that we shouldn't study history to avoid the mistakes of the past? Because none of the crises we now face are the same as those our ancestors faced." That makes sense! The fact that none of the crises we face are the same as those our ancestors faced is a pretty good reason to avoid studying history to avoid past mistakes. This suggests that "we shouldn't study history to avoid the mistakes of the past" is a conclusion that's supported by the fact that "none of the crises we now face are the same as those our ancestors faced." That makes the "we shouldn't study" claim a possible main conclusion and the "none of the crises we face" part a premise/conclusion. Now that we know the second possible conclusion is a premise/conclusion, let's try the "Why?" test with the first and third possible conclusions. "Why is it true that we shouldn't study history to avoid the mistakes of the past? Because studying history never enables one to avoid mistakes of the past." Again, that makes sense! If it's impossible to avoid past mistakes by studying history, then we shouldn't bother studying history to avoid past mistakes. Why bother with the impossible? So, this makes the "we shouldn't study" claim the main conclusion and the "studying history never enables" part another premise/conclusion. So, the passage's main conclusion is that we shouldn't study history to avoid past mistakes. Let's look for that in the answer choices.