Q15 - It is often said that

[sunhwa2881]

Can someone please explain this question? Thank you~

[giladedelman]

Thanks for the question.

Because older cultures had standards of beauty similar to our own, the argument reasons, it must be false that beauty is subjective.

Where's the gap? Well, it seems to be assuming that there's no connection between earlier cultures and our own -- that similarities in aesthetic taste are due to beauty being objective, and not due to similarities or connections between the cultures themselves.

(C) is correct. It weakens the argument by giving a counterexample to its assumption. If our standards of beauty were influenced by exposure to art from earlier cultures, then the similarity between the two isn't evidence of the objectivity of beauty.

(A) is incorrect because it would actually strengthen the argument, though "few" is an ambiguous term on the LSAT. But if "few" contemporary artists have been exposed to earlier works, then similarities in standards of beauty might indeed suggest an element of objectivity.

(B) is out of scope. We don't care about the arts' importance.

(D) is out of scope, too. Again, "important" doesn't factor in here.

(E) is out of scope. Who owns art is unrelated to whether beauty is objective or subjective.