Q15 - The French novelist Colette (1873 - 1954)

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Necessary Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: Colette's novels DO care about important moral questions.
Evidence: Each of her novels poetically condenses a major emotional crisis in the life of an ordinary person of her time. Such crises almost always raise important moral questions.

Answer Anticipation:
The author is just trying to prove that Colette's novels DO involve important moral questions. Has he succeeded? We know that her novels involve people going through emotional crises, which usually raise important moral questions. It's possible that the characters in Colette's novels are the exception to that rule and that THEIR emotional crises do NOT raise important moral questions. We might also object that "even though an emotional crisis usually raises an important question, is it fair to say that a novelist who describes a person's emotional crisis is, as a writer, raising important moral questions?"

Correct Answer:
B

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) We don't care about literary achievements, only whether her novels address moral questions.

(B) This has that famous "ruling out" language that so many correct Necessary Assumption answers have. Let's negate it and see if it weakens, "Novels that poetically condense a major crisis DO have to be indifferent to the moral questions raised by that crisis." Wow! That crushes the argument and proves the critics right. This is our answer!

(C) We don't care about whether Colette has been praised or whether she deserves it. We only care whether her novels address moral questions.

(D) This doesn't help us evaluate whether her novels care or don't care about important moral questions.

(E) This seems very tempting. If her purpose was NOT to explore moral questions of her time, would that show that her novels are indifferent to moral questions? No, not quite. First of all, her novels may have raised important moral questions to a DIFFERENT time. Secondly, she may have had a different purpose in mind for why she chose to poetically condense emotional crises, but she may still have written her novel with a purpose of addressing important moral questions. Maybe she intended to achieve that aim via some other part of the structure or content of her novels.

Takeaway/Pattern: Here, keeping a firm grasp of the conclusion and understanding that our task on Necessary Assumption is "which answer, if negated, most weakens" is the ticket!

#officialexplanation

[irenewerwerwer]

I narrow down to B and E then choose E as it seems as a typical correct answer to a defender-assumption question and the wording of B seems less appealing.

Could anyone please help confirm twhether the reason E incorrect is as follows?

Is E wrong because it is not necessary for argument to assume the "purpose" of Colette is to explore important moral questions by depicting emotional crises? And negating it would not hurt the argument right?

[kylelitfin]

This is a tricky one! Hopefully this helps you out:

Stimulus:

P1: Colette has been praised for vivid language.
P2: BUT, Critics gripe that Colette's novels are indifferent to important moral questions.
Conclusion: This is not fair.
Why?: Her novels are poetic condensations of major emotional crises in the lives of ordinary people which nearly always raise important moral questions.

Via pre-phrasing, you should already notice a logical gap in the argument: In order for the conclusion to be correct, the very act of raising important questions must also mean that an opinion is expressed (which would undercut the critics claim that Colette is indifferent to these questions).

So what is the assumption? That by raising important moral questions, Colette can take a stand on the issues raised.

Let's see if our pre-phrasing matches anything.

A). No. This is completely out-of-scope and irrelevant.
B). Here we are. Collete does not have to be indifferent to the questions raised. This assumption allows the conclusion to actually undercut the critics complaint that she is indifferent to important moral questions.
C.) The stimulus is not concerned with her level of praise. Nobody is questioning the legitimacy of her fame/honor.
D.) This connection does nothing. Completely irrelevant.
E.) I think this answer choice is tempting because of the term "explore". However, the ability to explore issues is the same as raising them. This does not alleviate the critics major complaint: Colette is indifferent to the questions she gives rise to. This is just stating what we already know, but not granting Colette the opportunity to take a position on these issues.

Hopefully this helps you out. Good luck!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Nice discussion guys, and great explanation kylelitfin!

I'd just add, that the correct answer doesn't exactly connect the terms where the gap lies in the argument but defends against the possible severing of those terms.

After reading the argument and evaluating the argument core, my instincts were to connect "raising important moral questions" with "not being indifferent to important moral questions." The correct answer doesn't quite relate the terms I was looking for. Instead it connects something that Colette does - condensing a major emotional crisis in the life of an ordinary person - with the conclusion that she is not indifferent to important moral questions.

Typically necessary assumptions work either by defending the argument from something detrimental occurring or by linking together terms that need to be connected. In this case it's sort of both. Answer choice (B) defends the argument from the possibility that there is no connection between the terms that need to be connected.

And just to chime in on answer choice (E), kylelitfin has it right on. Just because her purpose was to explore important moral questions, that would not tell us whether or not she was indifferent to those important moral questions. Whereas answer choice (B) definitely makes that connection.

Again nice discussion!

[xinglipku]

I can understand why B is correct, but for E, I think maybe there is a problem of how to understand "indifferent"? If it means "not thinking about or interested in someone or something"(as shown in the Cambridge online dictionary), then E seems OK to me: at least to explore does mean "think about"?

[wguwguwgu]

I can understand why B is correct, but for E, I think maybe there is a problem of how to understand "indifferent"? If it means "not thinking about or interested in someone or something"(as shown in the Cambridge online dictionary), then E seems OK to me: at least to explore does mean "think about"?

I actually agree with this. If Colette's purpose is to explore the moral questions, of course she is not indifferent to them. Also, it would be very difficult to imagine that her works would appear indifferent. However, E is still a wrong answer, because we are looking for a necessary, not sufficient assumption.

The main purpose of Colette could have been something completely different, but if the moral questions are significantly discussed, you still can not say her novels are indifferent to them.

[VincentAlessendri]

The things, if you negate it:

via: collette does not intend to explore moral questions with the condensation.

then the argument seems to be negated.

If Collette does not intend to explore the moral questions, then there is no way to tie the condensation to the fact that she is not indifferent.

[rbkfrye]

I think where people are getting stuck here is that the prompt seems to preview a "justify" question, because it has such an obvious logical gap, when in fact it is an "assumption" question, as the stimulus states.

E would justify the conclusion in my opinion"”the idea of the whole purpose of her central theme being something she's indifferent to strikes me as a little ridiculous. But it's an "assumption" question. As E is one of many possible bridgers of the argument's gap, the argument does not "depend" on it.

I overlooked B because it does not bridge the obvious gap, and therefore would be wrong in a "justify" question. However it is indeed an assumption the author relies on, as you can see by negating it ("novels that condense crises have to be indifferent" makes the charge the author calls "unfair" not only fair, but definitely true).

Remember every argument has infinite fringe assumptions ("The study proves all birds swim" assumes the birds tested weren't all storks, weren't all penguins, weren't mutated, weren't...), so even ones like B that don't directly connect the dots to the conclusion are still assumed by the author.

Pretty mean trick imo.

[ganbayou]

Hi,

So the conclusion is: it is unfair for the critics to claim that her novels are indifferent to important moral questions.
Premises are: Her novels are poetic condensation of emotional crisis, and they raise important moral questions.
Assumption: If condensation of emotional crisis, then it is not indifferent to important moral questions.
C does not say this assumption directly (it says "does not have to be indifferent"), but basically what it means is the assumption I come up with right?
I was not sure about E, but it is wrong, I think, because it is not about purpose and it also does not talk about whether it is "indifferent" so it's wrong,
Did I understand it correctly?
By the way, when the conclusion says "it is not fair" does it mean "it is wrong?"

Thank you

[JohnZ880]

The things, if you negate it:

via: collette does not intend to explore moral questions with the condensation.

then the argument seems to be negated.

If Collette does not intend to explore the moral questions, then there is no way to tie the condensation to the fact that she is not indifferent.

Go read the answer choice again. The negation you provided is not the proper negation. EDIT: It is the proper negation, it just doesn't destroy the argument like you think it does.

Answer choice E:
(Coette's purpose in poetically condensing emotional crises in the lives of characters in her novels) was (to explore some of the important moral questions of here time.)

Negated:
(Coette's purpose in poetically condensing emotional crises in the lives of characters in her novels) was NOT (to explore some of the important moral questions of here time.)

As one poster already pointed out, the purpose for her condensing can be manifold. Perhaps, for example, she thought the message of her novel was most effectively conveyed in a condensed format. Just because her purpose for poetically condensing emotional crises wasn't to explore important moral questions doesn't mean her writing as a whole was not geared to exploring important moral questions.

[abrenza123]

Can the novel not be indifferent to important moral questions without it being the author's purpose to explore important moral questions?

In other words, when the stimulus says "her novels are indifferent to important moral questions" does that mean that the critics thought that Collette's purpose wasn't to address/explore important moral questions in her novels?

I knew that B was correct because the negation completely wrecked the argument, but I didn't think "purpose to explore" meant her novels were or weren't indifferent to important moral questions.

If E had said "Collette's purpose in writing the novel was to explore important moral questions" would that be a necessary assumption?

[ohthatpatrick]

Blarg! I already responded to this earlier today, but it didn't post, and now I have to type it again from scratch. Apologies for what will be my hurried, frustrated tone (not-directed at you).

I agree that "writer's purpose" is related to whether a writer is indifferent to / concerned with important moral questions.

A novel could accidentally raise moral questions, even though the author isn't trying to do so. However, "the author was intending to raise moral questions" with "the purpose of writing the novel was to raise moral questions".

You can have lots of purposes in writing a novel, so it would be extreme to need THE author's purpose to be considering important questions.

If we re-wrote (E) to say, "At least one of her purposes in writing these novels was to raise important questions", then I think it would be fine. (Although it would essentially be the same claim that the conclusion is making)