Q18 - To classify a work of art

[pistachio2014]

Hi! I narrowed down my choices to (B) and (E) and ultimately chose (B) by luck. Could you please explain why (E) can be ruled out? Thanks!

[bbirdwell]

We cannot prove that a great work has broad popular appeal because popular appeal was not mentioned in the principle at all.

All we get from the principle is this:
great --> originality and far-reaching influence

(B) is correct because it represents the contrapositive of the original:
not original or no far-reaching influence --> not great

[geverett]

Hey Brian,
Many times the LSAT employs similar language to fool us. Can we not take "broad popular appeal" to equate with "far reaching influence"? I got fooled on E with this one, but feel like I have seen it happen many times where the answer choice changes the language employed while still maintaining a similar meaning and it has been correct. Help me out here.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Hi geverett! I'm going to take this one for Brian, since he's got so much on his plate at the moment...

I know exactly what you mean about the "flexing" of language on the LSAT and I've tried to come up with personal policies that help me avoid getting burned, since sometimes it seems like we are asked to be very flexible with the language and others we get burned for it.

Early in the section I stay very loose with the language and only tighten it up if I have more than one answer choice. Towards the end of the section, however, I start very tight with the language and only loosen up if I have no answer choices.

The reason why we cannot assume "broad popular appeal" is equivalent to "far reaching influence" is because the influence factor has already been accounted for. The answer choice talks about "originality," "influence," and here's the problem... adds to it "broad popular appeal." It's already mention the "influence" and this is late in the section, so it makes sense not to grant the test writer flexibility here.

Make sense?

[geverett]

would major influence on musicians not count as "far reaching influence upon artistic community" because while it might be a major influence on "musicians" the musicians it is referring to could be as few as two musicians which would not be considered representative of the musician community as a whole?

I can see why we cannot get there with "broad popular appeal" now because the stimulus is asking for "far reaching influence on artistic community" while this answer choice says "broad appeal" which come include appeal to the population on the whole while at the same time precluding the "artistic community".

I think I am starting to get there.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

So answer choice (E) is not a the correct answer, and I don't want to advocate that it's a great answer choice, and luckily we can dismiss it for the reason we were discussing before rather easily, but I wouldn't dismiss it just for the difference between a "major influence on musicians" vs. a "far reaching influence on the artistic community." If that were answer choice (E)'s only issue, it'd be a pretty subjective reason to get rid of it.

The LSAT never uses subjective reasons for dismissing an answer choice, though sometimes I know it does feel like the reasons are trivial! They are always significant and discernable.

[geverett]

Hey Matt,
Since the additional factor "broad popular appeal" is in the necessary condition is that why we say it is too much to make answer choice E correct?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

For this question you want to think of the answer choice as representing an argument and the principle as a bridge between the evidence and the conclusion. So ask yourself, could you use the principle in the stimulus to justify the argument in the answer choice? Answer choice (E) contains a conclusion that cannot be supported because it contains too many factors. Principle questions are different than say Sufficient Assumption questions because any excess information in a sufficient assumption is just that excess - and the principle would still justify the argument. But on principle questions, you really want the evidence to line up with the sufficient condition of the principle, and the conclusion to line up with the necessary condition - keeping in mind the likely use of the contrapositive.

So that's a long answer to your question - to which the simple answer would have been "yes."

Hope that helps...

[kopoku.08]

can someone explain why (c) isn't the correct answer? I was torn between (c) and (b)

[timmydoeslsat]

This is one question that tests LSAT fundamentals!

I know this from the stimulus:

Truly Great ---> Original and Far-reaching influence

Notice that I will not be able to determine what is truly great!

Just because I have both of those necessary conditions will not ensure something being truly great. So this gets rid of A, C, and E.

I am left with B and D.

B uses the contrapositive wonderfully and effortlessly.

D, on the other hand, gives us a premise of something not being truly great. We could conclude that it fails to have at least one of original and far-reaching influence.

We do not know for a fact that it fails to be original. It could be original yet not be far-reaching in influence.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Almost exactly right Timmy. And I totally agree that this is one of those LSAT questions that utilizes some really common form of tempting and yet incorrect answers.

Looking up I didn't see complete run through of the answer choices, though Timmy's analysis of what makes answer choices (A) and (C) is dead on, though for answer choice (E), the argument is not actually reversing the logic.

(A) both attempts to used reversed logic and misses one of the conditions. It's meant as a psychological ploy. Once you start thinking that this is missing the issue of far-reaching influence, it sets you up to be tempted by answer choice (C).
(C) reverses the logic in the stimulus.
(D) negates the logic in the stimulus.
(E) includes a term (broad popular appeal) that cannot be supported by the principle in the stimulus.

Hope that helps!

[timmydoeslsat]

Oh my bad, you are right. While E does not conclude that something is truly great, it establishes it as a premise. For this to be the right answer it must simply restate the two necessary conditions. And it does not do so.

[AlexK795]

Hi Folks,

Continuing the thread here, albeit a few years later. I find the idea of "flexing" language and figuring out when to lean towards more leniency on proxies for items and when to be more anal about it to be probably the most challenging aspect of LR. What I am gleaning for the discussion, unfortunately, is that there is not necessarily a golden one-size-fits-all rule, rather you must account for contextual clues to make reasonable inferences about when to grant use of an abstract proxy to describe an item.

I was down to B and E here - I identified B as a strong candidate very early by detecting its failure to satisfy one of the necessary conditions for the sufficient. I eliminated A, C, and D fairly easily due to common condition errors. Once I got to E, everything looked right on the first and second read. It kept looking like "Bach music truly great -> therefore has originality and major influence on musician (artistic) community. But then I was alerted to it the phrase immediately before the sufficient conditions being stated "not only has", and it kept tripping me. I kept deliberating unconsciously over whether the "broader popular appeal" item could be lumped into the "influence on the artistic community" necessary condition. In the end, I didn't really come to a concrete decision on that, I more so just told myself that I knew B was completely valid 100% and not bringing in external elements, whereas E was. I made my decision off of that and fortunately got it right.

Looking back, I believe the "not only has" and "as well" phrases are clear as day indicators that the "broad popular appeal item" is something that the LSAT makers intend us to interpret as separate and beyond the two necessary conditions. For this reason, we can't substantiate its occurrence based on the stimulus.

To play devil's advocate, if we were to rid the answer choice of these two phrases, and saying something like "since Bach's music is truly great, it contains originality and broad popular appeal." In this type of situation, B would probably contain some flaw that made it more obviously correct - but this would be a time where flexing the meaning of that item to serve as proxy for "far reaching influence upon the artistic community" would be much more defendable.