Q24 - It has been said that authors who write...

[waqar.v.rehman]

I need help with this one. I thought I've seen everything an assumptions question could throw at me. But half the life of me cannot figure out a) what the argument is trying to get at. and b) how the answer is E. Any help would be appreciated.

[baikkenny]

The correct answer is D.

[waqar.v.rehman]

Ahh, you are right. Typo on my part. Thanks for pointing that out. I still need help with this one.

[waqar.v.rehman]

Anyone? I could really use some help with this one. Thanks!

[ohthatpatrick]

I am WITH you on that one! I was doing this problem for the first time while I was tutoring, and I was embarrassingly stumped. I just had no idea what the heck they were going for.

It's a dreadful core and the correct answer is frustratingly extreme, but we can make some sense of it.

Question Type: Necessary Assumption

Argument Core:
conclusion
Authors who intend to give pleasure CAN also impart true subject matter.

evidence
If intending to give pleasure precluded you from being truthful, then this is the absurd world we'd live in:
You could tell how truthful a book was by looking at its sales figures, as sales figures should indicate popularity, which should indicate that the book gave people pleasure.

i.e. more sales --> more popularity --> more pleasure imparted --> less truth

EVALUATION OF CORE
The author is potentially arguing by contrapositive.

"X is wrong. After all, if X were right, then Y would follow."

What is the assumption here?

The author assumes that Y is false. That idea would trigger the contrapositive, allowing the author to conclude that X is wrong.

As this applies to Q24, our author has to assume that "you CANNOT determine truthfulness of a book simply by looking at sales figures".

However, none of the answers offer us that assumption.

Within the author's hypothetical example of absurdity, there are at least a couple dubious links:
i.e. more sales --> more popularity --> more pleasure imparted --> less truth

However what the answer choice is actually testing is this:
The author is trying to prove that "you CAN intend to impart pleasure but still impart truth."

The most direct way to prove that idea is to supply one counterexample:
Bob is an author who intended to impart pleasure and also imparted truth of subject matter.

The author is trying to demonstrate the absurdity of the original claim, that intending to give pleasure is mutually exclusive with imparting truth.

But does the author present an absurd scenario in which intending to give pleasure is mutually exclusive with imparting truth?

No, the author presents a scenario in which GIVING readers pleasure is mutually exclusive with imparting truth. The conclusion is about "authors who write in order to give pleasure" and the only nod to that idea in the evidence is discussing books that "gave people pleasure".

The correct answer, (D), is addressing that language shift.

Negating (D) just says, "Hey, you can't equate giving pleasure with INTENDING to give pleasure."

That doesn't seem like a huge objection, but remember the author's only support is this stupid hypothetical about popular, untruthful books. ARE those books that were written in order to give pleasure? Who knows?

The only way the author's evidence has any relevance to the original claim about "authors who write in order to give pleasure" is if we assume that "books that give pleasure = books that were written in order to give pleasure".

== other answers ==

(A) Whether they do or don't know a book will give them pleasure is irrelevant. We only care whether the author did or didn't intend to give pleasure and whether the book did or didn't impart true subject matter.

(B) Negating this gives you the extreme idea that "EVERY time a writer intends to give pleasure, she succeeds in doing so." That doesn't seem to matter. The conclusion just cares about whether an author intended to please, not the results.

(C) Whether readers are "unconcerned" about the truth of the book's contents is irrelevant to our real question: is the truth of the subject matter ever being imparted when authors are intending to please?

(E) This feels more like an objection than an assumption. The author is assuming that popularity implies pleasure.

As bad as this felt for me (and maybe others), this problem IS vulnerable to the classic Assumption shorctut: "New Guy in the Conclusion"

The conclusion has two concepts:
1. "authors who write with an intent to please"
2. "whether truth of subject matter can be imparted"

#2 gets discussed in the evidence, but #1 never does. Because "writing with intent to please" is NEW GUY IN THE CONCLUSION, that idea will be in the correct answer.

That limits us to (B) and (D).

#officialexplanation

[waqar.v.rehman]

Thank you so much! And wow! What an explanation. Okay, gonna work my way through what you wrote.

[waqar.v.rehman]

Okay, again...thank you for the wonderful explanation. I spent about an hour going back and forth between the question in the test packet and your explanation. And I'm sorry to ask for more from what is already a detailed explanation: But how does D), the correct answer, allow us to arrive at the conclusion, which is that it is NOT TRUE that an author cannot both write for pleasure and give the truth? I am SO confused.

[hannnn.wang]

New guy in conclusion definitely makes finding the right answer easier!!

But I want to understand what the test-maker is testing on. Can someone tell me how to make my thinking process closer to the what the question is being tested on?

My thinking process:

The conclusion is that "write to give pleasure" and "to impart truth" are not mutually exclusive.

The speaker initiates a semi-contrapositive attempt "A isn't true. If A were true, then B." Usually here the answer would be "B is not true", which would be "one can't determine the truthfulness of a book simply by sales figures." However, this isn't tested.

In this semi-contrapositive attempt:
sales figures is associated with truthfulness.
popularity is associated with pleasure.
pleasure is associated with un-truthfulness.
(gap: sales figures and popularity. Let's just assume there are associated)

So sales figures --> popularity --> pleasure given --> un-truthfulness. (CHAIN)
So here it's implied that if the claim were true, this CHAIN would have happened. So the CHAIN must be wrong in order to support conclusion. The CHAIN can be wrong if we say "pleasure imparted" and "un-truthfulness" aren't mutually exclusive.


What bothers me here is that there's no support for that the CHAIN wouldn't work. It's assumed (at least to me, what do you think?) that the chain (the contrapositive) wouldn't work.

So after all this work, there is still another gap between "pleasure imparted/given" in the logical CHAIN and "pleasure intended by the author" in the claim that's to be refuted. To fill this gap we need to assume that "pleasure imparted/given" requires "pleasure intended by the author."

What did I do wrong that complicated the thinking process?

Help!

[ohthatpatrick]

To the post two back, you asked:
"But how does D), the correct answer, allow us to arrive at the conclusion, which is that it is NOT TRUE that an author cannot both write for pleasure and give the truth? I am SO confused."

You're describing SUFFICIENT ASSUMPTION:
"Which answer choice, if true, allows us to arrive at the conclusion"

This is NECESSARY ASSUMPTION:
"Which answer choice, if false, would most weaken the argument"

Negating (D) allows us to weaken by saying, "Author ... you're talking about books that GIVE pleasure in your hypothetical. But you're arguing against a claim centered on writers INTENDING TO GIVE PLEASURE. Since these things are not equivalent, you've failed to provide any evidence about writers intending to give pleasure."

=======

To the previous poster ... I'm not sure if I fully understood your writing, but it seems like you have a similar concern to the post I just mentioned.

You were correct about the chain and correct about the idea that if the author is arguing by contrapositive, then the author is assuming that the chain does NOT hold.

The author is ALSO assuming an equivalence between "a book written in order to give pleasure" and "a book that gave people pleasure".

The author is assuming many, many things in this argument. We're doing a Necessary Assumption question, so the correct answer is free to name any ONE of these things. It doesn't have to name all of them.

I think that you (like me) were expecting the correct answer to deal with the contrapositive argument. But it didn't. It just dealt with a language shift between "intending to give pleasure" and "giving pleasure".

I think you're just frustrated that the correct answer didn't address OTHER legitimate concerns with the argument. That'll happen.

For anyone who wants an example of a question that DOES deliver on the contrapositive assumption, check out this one from Test 70:
https://www.manhattanprep.com/lsat/foru ... 11804.html

[Jonathan.a.schw]

I think you're condition for D is off - I believe it's /Intended --> /Give pleasure.

[Camiller]

I think you're condition for D is off - I believe it's /Intended --> /Give pleasure.

You are incorrect. (D) is appropriately diagrammed as follows:

book gives pleasure => the author intended book to give pleasure

This is the correct answer, as it is a necessary assumption and must be true in order for the argument to hold. The negation of (D) will cause the argument to fall apart.

[Jonathan.a.schw]

I believe your reply is the contrapositive of mine.

I think your condition for D is actually the negation and I misread what you meant to diagram.

I'm still certain how you got the premise of "If True, then Books Give Pleasure". Isn't it actually that "If popular, then books give pleasure, then some written is false?" The contrapositive would then be "If none false (i.e. if True), then didn't give pleasure, then unpopular".

Really appreciate your willingness to explain the logic a bit. Just having a tough time locking this one down.

[Camiller]

I believe your reply is the contrapositive of mine.

I think your condition for D is actually the negation and I misread what you meant to diagram.

I'm still certain how you got the premise of "If True, then Books Give Pleasure". Isn't it actually that "If popular, then books give pleasure, then some written is false?" The contrapositive would then be "If none false (i.e. if True), then didn't give pleasure, then unpopular".

Really appreciate your willingness to explain the logic a bit. Just having a tough time locking this one down.

You were right – my post was incorrect. I apologize.

[Jahma002]

Took me a while to unlock this one but you guys can thank me later, haha.

So, the chain of logics in bottom is the main focus. In the Sub-Conclusion it states that you can tell the truth of the book by looking at sales (whether up or down).
So if its popular (assumption of being high in sales) then it pleases, and its untruthful at some parts at least.

Mind that being truthful is a choice by common sense.

So, what the stimulus didnt discuss was what if its not popular? Is the book untruthful?
Well, according to the Sub-Conclusion that is the case.

Lets see: Its unpopular, the book doesnt please, the book is truthful.

If truthfulness is a choice then we MUST also be able to control the factor of PLEASING of the book.
Imagine, you write about truth then your book MUST NOT please or else by author's logic you wrote the truth. If you write untruthful statements then your books MUST please, or else by the author's logic it will be truth what you write.

Answer choice D gives us that option. With D we can lock up both sides of the coin instead of the one side that author gave us.

Hope I helped.
Ahmad

[krisk743]

I rarely think or say this....but this is my acceptable loss.


Take a blind guess, move on.

[Sylvia11]

Is the answer choice (D) needed for the author to show that accepting the claim "... authors who w rite in order to give pleasure cannot impart truth..." would lead to absurd consequence he describes? Also, is the question essentially asking us get the shift in "pleasure"?

[ohthatpatrick]

Try this fake argument on for size:

It has been said that Bob cannot name all fifty states. That claim cannot be true. After all, all of my neighbors can pass a citizenship test.

What's being assumed?



A couple things:
- Bob is one of my neighbors
- passing a citizenship test necessitates being able to name all fifty states

In that argument, our conclusion was
Bob can name all fifty states

To support that conclusion, we need premises that discuss Bob and discuss the ability to name all fifty states. Since we DIDN'T have any premises about Bob, we had an assumption about Bob. Since we didn't have any premises about the ability to name all fifty states, we had an assumption about that ability.


In a similar vein, in Q24's conclusion, it says
Authors who write in order to give pleasure can impart the truth of their subject matter.

To support that conclusion, we need premises that discuss "authors who write in order to give pleasure" and discuss "the ability to impart the truth of subject matter".

Since we don't have any premises about "authors who write in order to give pleasure" , we must be making some assumption about them.

The closest thing they match up with in the premises are "books that gave people pleasure".
Thus, the argument must be assuming that "authors who write in order to give pleasure" are associated with "books that gave people pleasure".

More specifically, the argument must be assuming that these books that gave pleasure were written by authors who intended to give pleasure.

(D) is spelling out that shift:
If a book gives readers pleasure, then it was written by an author who intended to give pleasure

Hope this helps

[DavidL707]

Claim: authors who write in order to give pleasure cannot impart to their readers the truth of their subject matter.

Conclusion: That claim cannot be true.

Premise: If it were true, one could determine the truthfulness of a book simply by looking at its sales figures.

And this is how they do to determine the truthfulness of a book: If the book were very popular, one could reasonably conclude that it gave people pleasure and therefore that at least some of what is written in the book is not true.

To bridge the premise and the conclusion, we need to assume that "one could not determine the truthfulness of a book by looking at its sales figures." It means that we need to show that the way one uses to determine the truthfulness of a book is not working. Then we just need to make the method invalid.
The method shows that if a book was popular, it gave pleasure then there must be something not true in the book. This judgment uses the claim in the first sentence as its principle: if the authors intentionally give pleasure, there must be something untrue in their books. But if authors do not do it on purpose and still give pleasure to readers, it is not necessarily true for authors not to impart the truth to readers. That is D's negation.

[andreperez7]

Conclusion: The critics are wrong; Authors that write to give pleasure CAN impart truth.
Premises: If the claim of critic’s were true, then sales figures would indicate a book’s truthfulness.
First Intermediate Conclusion: If a book is popular, then it gives pleasure.
Second Intermediate Conclusion: Some of the book is untrue


Prephrase: 1) Sales figures indicate popularity, 2) pleasure indicates an absence of truth.
3) Some books where author’s write to give pleasure write completely true books, 4) something else?

Explanation of correct AC: There’s a new term in the conclusion (author’s intention to give pleasure) while there isn’t anything in the premises about author’s intention to give pleasure. That is a new term. So, our correct answer has to address that, which D does, by connecting it to the result of giving pleasure.

Takeaway: Sometimes an argument has so many gaps that you need to inspect every answer choice and see whether such a gap occurred or not.

Aside: OhThatPatrick’s explanation is a must-read for this problem!