Q13 - It is characteristic of great artists

[skapur777]

This one was pretty easy but how does the argument not commit the part to whole flaw as exemplified in choice A as well?

[theaether]

It doesn't commit the fallacy in A because it already assumes as its premises that artists have that view, and writers have that view, and then you can infer that some writers are artists. We don't question the premises. If I say that all athletes are fast, and that Mike is fast, and then that Mike happens to be an athlete, I'm not making a faulty argument. Those were just the original facts.

The incorrect version would say something like artists have a certain view. And since writers are artists, they have that view as well. The drawing of the conclusion is where the faulty reasoning lies.

[giladedelman]

Also, notice the word "all" in answer choice (A). Such an important word on the LSAT! For (A) to be correct, the argument would have to assume that great writers share every characteristic of great artists. But it only says they have one in common!

Plus, as the second post points out, the argument explicitly states that this trait is shared, so it's not even an assumption.

[skapur777]

My question was more along the lines of:

Great writers have a discerning view of the basic social/political arrangements of societies.

Thus, the greater a writer, the more astute...

Isn't that part to whole? Just because great writers in general have a discerning view doesn't mean that the greater every single writer is, the more astute they are.

Just wondering. I totally see how the answer is E, but I just want to get my head around wrong answer choices and the specifics of part-to-whole, which I thought I understood before this question

[moon]

Could someone explain why (B) can't be the right answer please?
Thank you!

[sumukh09]

Hi Moon,

Keep in mind what it is exactly that the argument is saying and then you'll have a better understanding of why B is incorrect.

The argument is saying that in most cases (which is what we can equate "generally" to mean) great writers have an astute perception of the political and social arrangements of the society in which they live. From that premise the author concludes that the greater the writer, the more astute they will be in their perception of the political and social arrangements of the society in which they live.

This is different from what B is saying the argument is doing. B says that just because in some cases great writers have this astute perception of their society, all great writers will. Notice that that's not really what the argument is doing; not to mention the fact that B uses the qualifier "sometimes" whereas the argument uses "generally" or "most." What you seem to think the argument is doing is falsely equating "most" with "all," and that would be correct if the argument concluded as such: "therefore, if a writer is great, they will be astute in perceiving the basic social and political arrangements of one's society."

However, the argument, abstractly, says great writers have X, so the greater you are, the more of X you will have - that's a flaw!

If I presented the argument that most great basketball players can jump 30 inches high, therefore the greater the basketball player, the higher they can jump, would you be able to spot the flaw? Maybe there are other reasons why a greater basketball player is "greater," it does not necessarily mean they can jump higher. They could be more skilled in other areas which speak more to their greatness than their vertical. Hope this helps

[ohthatpatrick]

Great response!

Since there hasn't been a complete explanation for this one yet, I'll provide one here:

Question Type: Flaw

Prem:
Great writers generally have a sharp view of the social/political aspects of their society.

Conc:
The greater a writer is, the sharper his/her view of the social/political aspects of his/her society.

What this question highlights is one of LSAT's favorite linguistic distinctions to test: absolute language vs. relative (comparative) language.

The 7ft. man at the carnival was shorter than the 8ft. man.
Thus, the 7ft. man was short.

Hopefully, that conclusion seems dumb to you. That's because we switched from a comparative term, "shorter", to an absolute one, "short".

Similarly, the argument in Q13 is flawed because is shifts from "great writers have a sharp view" to "the greater the writer, the sharper the view".

I could say:
Most rich people give to charity.
Thus, the richer a person is, the more he/she gives to charity.

That doesn't have to always be true!

(A) This describes a Whole to Part flaw. However, this argument's premise and conclusion are both about great writers, so there's no shift from a group to a subset of that group. Instead, there's a shift from an absolute idea about great writers to a comparative idea about great writers.

(B) In order for this to be the correct answer, the argument would have said, "Sometimes, a greater writer has a sharper view of society than an inferior writer. Thus, the greater a writer one is, the sharper his view of society."

(C) This doesn't come close to describing the shift from "great writers have sharp view" vs. "the greater you are, the sharper your view" . Furthermore, the author is saying that these artists who have political insight DO also have discerning views of social arrangements. So the argument contradicts this so-called assumption.

(D) Typical trap with "assumes" something EXTREME. Assumes that ONLY great individuals can have discerning views? Get that garbage out of here. The author never implied that ONLY great artists have discerning views.

(E) The premise says that people who have the quality of "great writer" tend to have the quality of "sharp view of society". The conclusion says that people who have "more greatness as a writer" have a "sharper view of society". Matches perfectly.

[Salvadoretorrez]

It's actually a very simple flaw that is not explicitly stated in most courses, but it is understood as so and can be named Conditional vs Correlation

Think about it for a second, when something is conditional, A triggers B or in this case, all great writers and artists have a discerning view about society.

But that is a totally different relationship than what would signal a correlation of the two variables, as in when you have more A, then you have more B or something descriptive where more or less of something leads to more or less of something.

The flaw here is compounding and combining both kind of relationships here, which is completely unsupported.

Although Great writers and artists do have a discerning view of society, that signal a conditional; that if you are a great writer or artist then you have a discerning view of society.

To make it simple, let's say that stands as support for the correlational statement of if the better the great writer you are, the more discerning your writing is; would that make it valid? the answer is no! you cannot mix those kind of relationships because it destroys the validity of the support! Anyways just thought I would jump in and throw my two cents, I was going over this test.