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ohthatpatrick
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Re: Q11 - Art critic: The Woerner

by ohthatpatrick Fri Dec 31, 1999 8:00 pm

Question Type:
Principle-Strengthen (which principle most justifies the argument)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: NP shouldn't have gotten the WJ Award for criticism for his reviews of cars.
Evidence: Paulsen's reviews weren't criticism. Cars are utilitarian things, not works of arts. And if you're not art, you can't reveal important truths about your culture.

Answer Anticipation:
If we establish that Paulsen's reviews don't count as criticism, then we'll justify that Paulsen shouldn't have gotten this WJ criticism award. We need a rule that takes what we know about Paulsen's reviews and tells us, "THAT's not criticism." We know that Paulsen's reviews were about utiliarian things, not works of art, and thus they can't reveal truths about our culture. We could prephrase "If something is about utilitarian things or if something doesn't reveal important cultural truths, then it doesn't count as criticism".

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) We can't establish that NP tried to portray cars as works of art, so we can't use this rule.

(B) Yes! This says "if an object doesn't reveal important cultural truths, then reviews of that object can't be considered criticism."

(C) Almost, but we can't establish whether NP wrote the review "for the purpose of" revealing important truths. We only know that "cars do not reveal important truths", but who knows if NP was aware of that in her intent while writing these reviews.

(D) We can't establish whether NP considers herself a critic.

(E) This is the illegal negation of what we want. We want "DOESN'T reveal important truth, DOESN'T cound as criticism", and this gives us a negated version of that.

Takeaway/Pattern: Often, these questions have some worthless answers that don't present a rule that gives us the right side we need. Here, only (E) had that flaw. The other four would take us somewhere useful, but we can only trigger (B) based on the facts we know.

#officialexplanation
 
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Q11 - Art critic: The Woerner

by jardinsouslapluie5 Thu Sep 27, 2012 3:22 am

Is this argument's conclusion "This is inappropriate."?
I first thought (B) as a contender, then when I consider the conclusion, I thought "giving the award is inappropriate," so I changed to (A).
Help please?
 
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Re: Q11 - Art critic: The Woerner

by timmydoeslsat Thu Sep 27, 2012 1:13 pm

You are right that the conclusion is that it is inappropriate for Paulsen to get the award for criticism.

The evidence is that:
- The award should be given for criticism and Paulsen's work is not criticism.

But how do we arrive at the idea that Paulsen's work is not a criticism?

The only evidence we are given is that her was was about cars, which are ulti. things and not works of art. And thing that are not works of art do not reveal important truths.

We would like to have a principle to justify this subsidiary conclusion of Paulsen's work not being a criticism. We know Paulsen's work is not about works of art, which in turn lets us infer that these things do not reveal important truths, but that does not establish it as not a criticism.

Answer choice (A) gives us a situation that we do not know exists in evidence. We do not know whether Paulson portrayed this as a work of art. In fact, even if she did, it would not help justify our subsidiary conclusion. This would not trigger anything in our evidence.

Answer choice (B) does this for us.
 
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Re: Q11 - Art critic: The Woerner

by asafezrati Fri Aug 07, 2015 6:38 pm

Here's a full explanation:

The argument's core is:

Premises:
NP reviewed cars
Cars -> ~Works of Art -> ~Reveal Important Truths about the society that made it

Intermediary conclusion:
NP's writing wasn't criticism.

(another premise):
The award should be given for criticism.

Final conclusion:
This was inappropriate.

There are many gaps, and while I thought I would see something that bridges the final ones, we got something that brings us to intermediary conclusion that NP didn't write criticism.

A. We don't know if NP portrays the items as works of art.
B. ~Reveal important truths about society (=culture I guess) -> Review ISN'T criticism. That's helpful.
C. Adds the idea of "purpose" while the argument doesn't speak about intention, but focuses on what the review actually does, and that's a big difference.
D. The argument doesn't say what NP considers herself to be.
E. Reverses the conditional language: Reveal Truths About culture -> Should be considered to be criticism. We need the opposite.

So B is the one that "most helps to justify the reasoning."