Q25 - Monica: The sculpture commissioned

[wj097]

Can someone explain how to eliminate (A)??

The only thing that I could squeeze out was that Hector concludes something SHOULD be removed, and this kind of conclusion has no bearing on whether it is actually carried out or not. One slight complication is that (A) also uses such recommendation word as SHOULD and wasn't sure how this would affect.

Also, the question stem mentions "in responding to Monica" and can we ignore this part and mostly focus on Hector's argument alone??

Thx

[tommywallach]

Hey Wj,

Always begin by focusing in on the argument itself...or in this case, both arguments!

Monica:
Conclusion: Don't remove the sculpture
Counterpremise: Everybody hates it
Premise: They don't know art, so it could still be great
Assumption: Artistic merit matters

Hector:
Conclusion: Remove it
Counterpremise: It could have artistic merit
Premise: Public art ought to benefit people, and opinion is the only way to figure out what benefit people feel they are getting
Assumption: The art isn't providing a benefit even when people think it isn't [Tough to predict...you don't have to predict it to get the right answer.]

Now let's go through the answer choices:

(A) Hector's argument is ONLY about art. He believes we should listen to the public on this because "art commissioned for a public space ought to benefit the public." He does NOT say that he believes public opinion should be listened to on ALL things. In fact, he only says that opinion tells you what the public FEELS is to it's benefit (see the correct answer). [Side Note: (A) should feel to strong to you, what with the "no matter what"]

(B) Hector's argument is hypothetical ("if public opinion is what you say"), so it doesn't actually matter what the truth is.

(C) Hector doesn't believe this. In fact, at the very beginning, he says that the sculpture might actually have artistic merit, whether or not people appreciate it.

(D) Hector never says anything like this. He says they ought to BENEFIT THE PUBLIC, whether or not they have "artistic merit."

(E) This is Hector's assumption. He says that "popular opinion is ultimately the only way of determining what the public feels is to its benefit." But what if people FEEL something that isn't true? Hector's argument assumes that people's opinion lines up with reality; otherwise, you couldn't argue to get rid of the sculpture based on whether or not it benefits the public purely based on people SAYING it didn't benefit them.

Hope that helps!

-t

[WaltGrace1983]

I eliminated (A) - (D) for the same reasons outlined above. However, I feel like (E) is strange because it never actually aligns up to help bridge a gap between the premise and conclusion. It never really shows anything about WHY the sculpture should be removed. What's going on there?

[christine.defenbaugh]

Great question, WaltGrace1983!

I think the key thing to remember here is that this is asking for a necessary assumption and not necessarily a sufficient one!

(E) absolutely bridges a gap in the argument (getting from "feelings" to "benefit"), but it doesn't bridge a gap that directly touches the conclusion. We'd need another assumption to get the rest of the way to the conclusion.

But that's okay, since we're not looking for a sufficient assumption!

Remember that something can fill A gap without filling ALL the gaps, and filling A gap may not touch the conclusion itself.

[WaltGrace1983]

Thanks! Let me see if I got this right, then.

Work of art commissioned for a public space ought to benefit the public (this is a premise, so its true and not debatable)
+
Popular opinion is the only way of determining what the public feels is to its benefit
+
Popular opinion is what you say it is
→
Space should be removed

The problem is that there is a gap between what they FEEL is to their benefit and what actually IS to their benefit. We know, without question, that a public space ought to benefit the public. So (public space) → (benefit) / ~(benefit) → ~(public space).

However, the only thing we know about (benefit) is what these people FEEL is to their benefit. What is to their benefit may be different from what they FEEL is to their benefit. When my mother told me to eat vegetables when I was kid, I certainly did not FEEL it was to my benefit. Was it? Absolutely.

Thanks for the advice.

A few questions though (it seems there always is with me )

(1) Would (A) be right if it got rid of the "no matter what..." clause and just said "public opinion should be acted on?" It seems so because if public opinion should NOT be acted on, I would wonder why the sculpture "certainly ought to be removed." It seems that the only thing wrong with (A) is its strong language at the beginning. What do you think?

(2) How do you handle conclusions with conditional language (if public opinion is what you say it is). Do you make the sufficient condition another premise? Do you make it one giant conclusion? How do you think about it. In addition - and I suppose this goes for conditional premises too - if the sufficient condition is NOT satisfied (if the answer would have said something like, "for those sculptures in which public opinion is NOT what you say..."), wouldn't that answer choice be useless in pretty much every question type?

Thanks!!

[christine.defenbaugh]

Great work WaltGrace1983!

Thanks!
A few questions though (it seems there always is with me )

(1) Would (A) be right if it got rid of the "no matter what..." clause and just said "public opinion should be acted on?" It seems so because if public opinion should NOT be acted on, I would wonder why the sculpture "certainly ought to be removed." It seems that the only thing wrong with (A) is its strong language at the beginning. What do you think?

I don't think that would be quite enough. When I read the statement "public opinion should be acted on", it seems to be suggesting that it should ALWAYS be acted on. While it may not use the word "always", it is a definitive blanket statement that carries the implication of that same strength.

Now, if you actively soften it down to "Public opinion should sometimes be acted on", then I'd agree with you! But just removing the super-explicit language at the beginning doesn't go far enough.

(2) How do you handle conclusions with conditional language (if public opinion is what you say it is). Do you make the sufficient condition another premise? Do you make it one giant conclusion? How do you think about it. In addition - and I suppose this goes for conditional premises too - if the sufficient condition is NOT satisfied (if the answer would have said something like, "for those sculptures in which public opinion is NOT what you say..."), wouldn't that answer choice be useless in pretty much every question type?

Absolutely DO NOT make the sufficient condition a premise! If you do, you are implying that the sufficient condition HAS BEEN TRIGGERED, and that is not necessarily the case!

It's useful to mention here that we can, if we try hard enough, turn almost anything into a conditional statement - it's just not usually all that useful to do so. Consider if our argument was:

Roses are red. Therefore, roses are beautiful.

I could think of that conclusion as a conditional, if I really tried:

Roses are red. Therefore, if you are a rose, then you are beautiful.

What's the logical difference? Absolutely nothing! So, what exactly is that "if you are a rose" doing? It's setting the parameters for what the conclusion is talking about. Answer choices that talk about what happens if you are NOT a rose are completely outside the parameters of the conclusion.

So, you are right on target when you say that an answer choice that introduced "if public opinion is NOT what Monica says", that would by definition be outside the scope of the conclusion!

Keep up the great work!

[Yu440]

Hi I was tempted by choice A, but I think it's because I negated it wrongly. I thought the negation of it would be "not matter what the public's opinion is on an issue affecting the public good, that public opinion ought not to be acted on". If this were the case, then A would be have to be true right?

Instead, it should be "no matter what the public's opinion is on an issue affecting the public good, that public opinion doesn't always have to be acted on."

Is this correct?

[ohthatpatrick]

If a sentence is really densely worded or phrased, negating it can be tricky. You might want to avoid negating it (and simply ask if definitely matches the author's thinking or if it sounds too strong / backwards).

Or, you might want to find an easier equivalent way of saying what that answer choice says, because that cleaned up restatement might be easier to negate.

A) is saying "for issues affecting the public good, the public's opinion should always be acted on"

So negating it would, as you said, mean "for issues affecting the public good, the public's opinion should not always be acted on".

A) is a conditional statement.
"If an issue affects the public good, then the public's opinion should be acted on"

When you negate a conditional, you NEVER get a conditional

Negating a conditional = there is at least one possible counterexample

Part of the confusion here is that we use the term Negating in Nec Assump questions as a verb that means "contradict this claim in the most minimal fashion".

But we use the term Negation in conditional logic when we're talking about contradicting the sufficient or necessary condition.

So students often think that negating a conditional logic answer choice involves some form of contrapositive or illegal negation or something, but it's none of that.

Contradicting a conditional claim just means saying, "THERE'S no permanent, universal connection from that first idea to that second idea. There's at least one case in which the left side happens but the right side doesn't."

My quick reaction to (A) is that it's too expansive a rule for the author to have weighed in on.
The author was concerned with rules for works of art commissioned for a public space,
not with ANY issue affecting the public good.

Hope this helps.

[YufeiR103]

According to my understanding, Hector is not saying the the public opinion should be acted on because it is the public's opinion, but because the public feels can reflect what will benefit the public.
The assumption is on that "what the public feels is to its benefit" is "a benefit to he public", which connects the logic chain.