Q5 - A famous artist once claimed

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
ID the Conclusion ("main point" is sometime more gisty or implicit, than when they ask us for the "conclusion")

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: (implicit) Not ALL great art imitates nature.
Evidence: If all great art imitated nature, then all great music would imitate nature, and most great music imitates nothing.

Answer Anticipation:
This conclusion was implicit because the author argued by contrapositive. If an author ever says, "If X were true, then Y would be true. But Y is NOT true." then she's implicity arguing that X is not true.

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) This is never said or implied.

(B) Yes? This is a weird answer, but this is essentially what the author leaves us with -- it seemed like the author was saying that "the artist's claim is incorrect", but another way to resolve the tension would be to say that most great music isn't great art.

(C) Painting and sculpture were never discussed.

(D) This is never said or implied.

(E) The author is not arguing that to be great music you MUST imitate nature, as this answer implies.

Takeaway/Pattern: That is a very weird correct answer. It would be more appropriate as the answer to an Inference question stem, which would ask "What conclusion can we draw from the paragraph?" But this is a good reminder that we'll have to stay flexible and pick the best answer, even if it feels far from perfect.

#officialexplanation

[logicfiend]

Ok, I know this is #5, but this is definitely not a #5 question, even for a 2nd section of LR. It felt super easy while I was reviewing, but I was pretty thrown off by a few of these questions in the very beginning. In general, there seems to be a shift in LR after PT 65 where some of these earlier questions are much trickier than past PTs. Anyone else get that as well?

Anyway, thought I would write out an explanation if anyone else was in the same, lowly boat that I was at the end of this section

Claim: A famous artist once claimed that all great art imitates nature.

P1: If this claim was correct, than any music that is great art would imitate nature.

P2: But while some music may imitate ocean waves or the galloping of horses, for example, most great music imitates nothing at all.

The easiest way for me to work through the stimulus was using conditional language:

Claim: Great art --> imitate nature

P1: We would think since.... music --> great art --> imitate nature

P2: But, most great music --> ~imitate nature

Therefore... Most great art -->~imitate nature --> ~great art

most music is not great art, which is (B).

[maryadkins]

Well done, and just to go through the others:

(A) has nothing to do with anything.

(C) brings up stuff that isn't in the argument.

(D) makes it about nature, when it's about art.

(E) is never stated or even suggested. And the argument is about music that IS great.

I'm with you that it is a tricky one by way of Main Point questions early in the section, but on this question the easiest way for me to get to it was through process of elimination. Thanks for sharing.