Q21 - Jane: Professor Harper’s ideas for

[b91302310]

I think (A) is really tempting. So, is it incorrect because it is not a weakness in "Jane's argement" that Mark tries to overcome but a weakness in "evaluating the sound of guitar"?

Could anyone explain it?

Thanks!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT2]

Not sure if I see a weakness that Mark is trying to help overcome.

Jane gives one reason why Professor Harper's ideas are of no value, and Mark follows up with another reason.

Certainly his ideas are a bit different from hers -- he's saying Torres was adopted because of the improvement it made in "tonal quality" whereas Jane says there is no agreement about what a guitar should sound like --

But notice that this is a slight (not exact) difference in opinion -- that is not the same thing as something that shows a weakness.

For the LSAT, 99% of the time, you can consider weakness in terms of the BOND between evidence and conclusion.

For example, if I said, "We should serve potatoes for dinner because they look pretty."

The evidence is "they look pretty" and the conclusion is "we should serve potatoes at dinner."

When looking for a weakness, we want to think of how the author is trying to connect these ideas -- some ways to weaken would be,

"Prettiness shouldn't matter in terms of what gets served tonight."
"Taste is more important that looks when it comes to what we ought to eat tonight" etc.

Let's write the same argument again:

"We should serve potatoes for dinner because they look pretty."

Now let's imagine a rebuttal: "Potatoes don't look pretty."

Notice, this is a difference in opinion, but it does NOT show a weakness in terms of how the original person is trying to connect evidence to conclusion.

Subtle issue, for sure. Hope that helps, and please follow up if you need clarification.

[mcrittell]

What would D look like? I misunderstood it to mean that they has the same conclusion but for difference reasons.

[kopoku.08]

what is the premise that is in common?

[maryadkins]

Jane says:

no general agreement re: how guitar should sound --> no basis for evaluating merits --> PH's ideas to modify guitar design have no value

Mark:

there has been enough time for PH's ideas to be adopted if they really improved sound

Mark is adding a premise, but not disagreeing with her conclusion. And his premise is that there has been time for people to come to agreement, had Harper's ideas really been good--which conflicts with Jane's point that there's no basis on which to come to agreement. (E) says this.

(B) is wrong because there isn't a common premise.

(C) is wrong because they don't argue for different conclusions.

(D) is wrong because he's not restating her argument at all. He's just adding a premise to it.

Hope this helps!

[Mab6q]

The weakness that I spotted in Jane's argument was the assumption that there must be general agreement among musicians as to what a guitar should sounds like and widely accepted basis for evaluating the merits of a guitar's sound an idea to modify the design of guitars. This IMO is a weakness that Mark overcomes by showing that regardless of this assumption, the conclusion still has support.

[deedubbew]

Answer choice A: Mark is saying that in the case that there is in fact a way to measure sound quality, Harper still would have valueless ideas. Does this not cover both possibilities of circumstances, either if sound can be measured or not? Thus, is Mark not showing how a possible counter argument or weakness could be preemptively overcome?

[aznriceboi17]

I was thinking the same thing as deedubbew and wanted to know what others thought.

To me, it seems that there are 2 ways to reconcile Jane and Mark's premises.

One way is to argue that the lack of a widely accepted standard does NOT imply that there is no OBJECTIVE standard. It could simply mean that we haven't discovered what it is. Jane's argument only handles the case where there is no objective standard; Mark's argument covers the case where there is.

A second way is to avoid dealing with objective standards, and note that even if different standards are very different for almost all of the population, they can still agree on a single element (in which case it would be widely accepted that that element was good).

To be concrete, suppose we evaluate a population of 100 members by giving them a letter grade in A, B, C, D, F.

Suppose evaluation standard X gives 's F's to 99 elements, and an A to one element. At the same time, evaluation standard Y gives D's to 99 elements, and an A to the same lone element that got an A under X. Finally, evaluation standard Z gives C's to 99 elements, and an A to the same element who got an A under X and Y.

X, Y, Z are all widely different standards. And suppose we humans are evenly split among the 3 in our personal opinions. Even though there is clearly no widely accepted standard, we can all agree that that element that got an A under X, Y, Z is good.

In this second way of reconciling the two arguments, Jane's argument covers the case where there isn't an element that most people agree is good. Mark's argument fills in the gap for those scenarios where there is a widely acclaimed element, despite all the standards being for the most part very different.

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The credited response, E, did seem attractive to me since there was a simpler argument that presented itself in support of it. However, I thought it was simpler only because it glossed over the details and concluded that Jane and Mark's premises were in conflict.

[maryadkins]

I think the simplest way of getting rid of (A) is that Mark's statement doesn't overcome the "weakness," or gap, in Jane's argument. Even if (A) is true, that doesn't mean her conclusion is true, i.e. that the gap is "overcome."

(E), however, is spot on.