Q13 - Lindsey: There are, of course, many poets

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Role/Function

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: If the poets I know are a representative sample, then it looks like writing poetry makes you melancholy.

Evidence: The poets I know are melancholy, and an activity as deep as writing poetry can be depressing.

Answer Anticipation:
It's one of her two premises.

Given that the author is posing a causal claim in her conclusion, one of her premises provides (yes cause, yes effect) data points to support her causal claim: the poets she knows do write poetry and are melancholy. The other premise makes the causal claim more plausible by explaining the mechanism by which writing poetry would cause melancholy.

Correct Answer:
E

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) No, it's not a premise in support of a subsidiary conclusion. There aren't any subsidiary conclusions here.

(B) No, it's not a subsidiary conclusion. Was any support provided for why we should believe that "an activity as deep as writing poetry can be depressing"? No, that would have sounded like "dealing with profound issues in engrossing ways forces one to face the darker parts of life, ultimately leading to a more dismal feel for the universe".

(C) Nope, it's one of two premises.

(D) There is a claim in the conclusion that is 'poets are made melancholy by writing poetry'. The sentence we're asked about supports that claim, but it's weird to say it clarifies the claim. We'd be stretching the usual meaning of that word too much, and (E) bluntly says premise, which is exactly what we would naturally call the function of this sentence

(E) YES, the "direct support" sounds like a trap, but it's the idea of differentiating it from the indirect support described in (A). The author has two premises that each directly support the conclusion.

Takeaway/Pattern: LSAT knows that we're primed to look for Subsidiary conclusions on Role/Function problems, but we shouldn't be so eager that we force it. We can always ask, "Why should I believe that" of any claim, and if we can't point to explicit support, then it can't be counted as a conclusion. The claim we're asked about here is actually prefaced by "As everyone knows", which is LSAT's clarification that this last idea is unsupported. It's just an accepted axiom, to our author.

#officialexplanation

[HayleyF756]

What is the difference in answer choice for D and E? They seem like they're both saying/offering THE EXACT same thing to me...