Attacking Premise? Conclusion?

[ganbayou]

Hi,

On Weaken question, we cannot directly attack (disprove) premise or conclusion right?
But for Strengthen question we can make the premise more valid to support the argument right? But we cannot just repeat saying the conclusion is correct...
So they are not completely the same?
But I think I saw in very old PT, a correct answer can attack premise...so I'm confused.
Could you clarify this a bit?

Thank you

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Good question ganbayou.

For Strengthen questions, we cannot support the argument by supporting a premise. We're here to evaluate the reasoning of an argument, and that means we assume the evidence is true from the beginning. We're unlikely to be presented with the conclusion, that we're being asked to support, in the answer choices.

For Weaken questions, we might weaken the connection between a premise and the conclusion, but we're unlikely to directly contradict a premise in the right answer.

I'd bet if you look at the old PT example you're thinking about, that the right answer doesn't contradict a premise, but makes the premise less relevant to the conclusion by changing scope in some way.