Q22 - Any writer whose purpose is

[lisahollchang]

This question involves a whole bunch of conditional reasoning chains and I wanted to throw out how I understood the problem to see if I got it right.

"Any writer whose purpose is personal expression sometimes uses words ambiguously." I symbolized this as:
PE ----> SWA

(PE: Writers whose purpose = personal expression, SWA: sometimes use words ambiguously)

"Every poet's purpose is personal expression" resulted in:
P ----> PE -----> SWA

(P = poet)

"Thus no poetry reader's enjoyment depends on attaining a precise understanding of what the poet means." This resulted in a new conditional reasoning chain:

PR -----> ~DPU

(PR: poetry reader; DPU: enjoyment depends on precise understanding of writer)

I originally thought I should diagram this as:
~PR -----> DPU
but then the contrapositive (~DPU -----> PR) seemed to exclude too many other types of readers.

Answer C (the correct answer) is "No writer who ever uses words ambiguously has any reader whose enjoyment depends on attaining a precise understanding of what the writer means" and could be diagrammed as:

SWA -----> R ------>~DPU

Answer A is wrong because of it's really tricky rewording of the stimulus. "Try to attain" does not equal "depend on attaining." Otherwise the conditional reasoning is equal to C.

Did I do this right? And is my symbolization of the "poetry reader" statement in the stimulus correct? Thanks!

[noah]

Fancy footwork! All your diagrams are correct. A couple of notes to push you a bit further (if you're interested):

1. You might find it easier to use less abstracted notation. I used "Ambig" instead of your SWA, which allows me to more quickly remember what I meant there.

2. You didn't explain why (C) allows the conclusion to be drawn. Can you do explain it to me in a more intuitive manner?

I look forward to seeing your thoughts.

[lisahollchang]

Hi Noah,

Tips #1 is helpful! I've been trying to figure out ways to make my representations more intuitive than long strings of capital letters.

To attempt to explain C more intuitively: The stimulus pulls the the example about poets and poetry readers and makes the conclusion that no poetry readers have to understand the poem precisely to enjoy it. If C is true, that any writer who uses words ambiguously doesn't have readers who depend on a precise understanding of meaning, then the sub-group in the stimulus of poets and poetry readers follow this rule.

[tianfeng102]

Intuitively, if a writer uses words ambiguously, how could any reader understand precisely what the write means in the first place?

[lhermary]

So I diagrammed it similar to the OP

Poet Purpose->Personal Expression <Sometimes-> Words ambiguously

Conclusion

poetry reader enjoyment->~Precise Understanding of what the poet means

The initial issue I had with this was that nothing in the premise or the conclusion match. C basically says

Words ambiguously -> ~Precise understanding of what the poet means

But what about the other inferences in the premise (Poet Purpose and Personal Expression? In the future how will I know to look for 'Words ambiguously -> ~Precise understanding of what the poet means'

Thanks

[timmydoeslsat]

The real issue here is the idea of these new terms coming up in the conclusion. The idea of poet readers' enjoyment and the idea of attaining a precise understanding of what the poet means.

To go from sometimes using words ambiguously does not have mean that they do not have a precise meaning of what the poet means. So I would ceraintly call that into question if we are to be able to logically infer that conclusion.

So I have a rather simple setup here:

Poet Purpose ---> PE some A
___________________________
PReaderEnjoyment -/-> Attain Prec Meaning

-/-> = this indicates that we do not have to depend on that condition.

So I am heading into the answer choices without a prephrased assumption in mind, which is rare for this question stem, but I am searching for these no terms and how it relates to my evidence. I need some tie in from the evidence to relate the idea in the conclusion.

(A) Does not mention PReaderEnjoyment.

(B) Author not caring does not work here. We want to know about the poetry readers and what they think.

(C) Love it. We know that a poet writer sometimes has A, and this triggers the idea that no reader's enjoyment of this writer depends on this precise meaning.

(D) Would not give this a long look. It says most. We need something forceful enough to give us "No poetry reader's enjoyment...." A most statement or a some statement is not going to get us there logically speaking.

(E) This does not connect to anything in our evidence. We would be left with more premises and a logically invalid conclusion.

[lhermary]

Thanks. And thanks for the quick response.

[SJK493]

When it says 'Any writer whose purpose is personal expression sometimes uses words ambiguously' I thought the sometimes was important. But for the answer this changes to 'No writer who ever uses words ambiguously.'

How is this possible? Any thoughts on this?

[YozzR849]

When it says 'Any writer whose purpose is personal expression sometimes uses words ambiguously' I thought the lawgic translates to Writers --sometimes--> uses words ambiguously.

Apparently, it translates to Writers ----> uses words ambiguously


Can someone explain to me why I'm wrong? I thought "sometimes" means "some"