#7 - Essayist: Lessing contended that an art form's medium

[ngreen221]

Hello PS,

I answered this correctly during a timed practice test by quickly using the mechanistic approach to pick out "an amalgam of disparate images" in the conclusion that was not in the premises, and used the premise "literature, consisting of words read in succession, must represent events or actions occurring in sequence." that was not in the conclusion, but I wasn't completely 100% confident (I suppose I'm always skeptical).

I went back through for a blind review and switched my answer from A to C. I believe that I read C and felt that it answered the question more clearly since it included "an amalgam of disparate images", while also mentioning Lessing's awareness of the imagists' poetry, but I'm still not sure. May I please have an explanation for why answer choice C is wrong?

Thanks always!

[Jay Donnell]

Hi ngreen221!

It is important to watch for that mechanistic approach in linking terms across the premise/conclusion divide in a Justify question, but it's also extremely important to make sure the answer choice provides enough logical force to 100% prove (aka justify) the conclusion.

Lessing offers a contention about the requirements for legitimacy of art, and specifies that literature, "consisting of words read in succession, must represent events or actions occurring in sequence."

That means, Lessing would look at a piece of literature that did not consist of such a sequence as illegitimate art, by means of using the contrapositive of his statement I quoted above.

The author of the argument concludes that "The claim about literature must be rejected." This means, what Lessing said was a requirement for literature to be deemed legitimate art was note actually required.

The author leads to this conclusion by using poetry (a form of literature) that is presumed to be legitimate, and "which consist solely of amalgams of disparate images."

For the author to prove Lessing wrong, we need to provide an instance of legitimate literature that does not 'represent events or actions occurring in a sequence.' All we have is these imagist's poems, which are deemed legitimate but 'consist solely of amalgams of disparate images.'

That means, the missing assumption that would allow us to justify the author's argument (and by that, prove Lessing wrong) is that these amalgams of disparate images must not be equivalent to a representation of events or actions in a sequence.

A provides exactly that, and I'll now show the conditional version of what I've described above.

LL= legitimate literature
SADI = solely amalgams of disparate images
RSEA= represent sequence of events or actions

Premise: LL --> SADI

______________________
Conclusion: LL --> ~RSEA (legitimate literature doesn't need to represent a sequence of events or actions)

That means the missing link to complete the conditional argument looks as follows:

LL --> SADI
(SADI --> ~RSEA)
_______________
LL --> ~RSEA



With answer choice C, we aren't provided nearly enough power to prove that Lessing's claim must be rejected. Knowing that he was unaware that this kind of poetry had such amalgams is insufficient to prove that his claim is wrong.

In the idea of the mechanistic approach, C brings up the imagist's poetry. Since in the stimulus, that poetry was introduced as legitimate literature, that term was actually used twice and not missing and therefore desired in the answer. In this case, it was the two other terms that LL was connected to that we wanted to find in an answer to help bridge the gap in the argument, and A provides a perfect sufficient assumption to Justify the argument.


That got longer than I intended it to be, I hope it helps!

[ngreen221]

Woah, that was a longer response than I was anticipating, but thank you! That actually clears up my confusion!

[Jay Donnell]

Glad to hear it

Keep up the good work and keep those questions coming!

[lsatstudying11]

Hello,

I am wondering if the assumption that an imagist's poetry is a form of literature is something that is implied by the stimulus? If this was an Assumption question, would this idea that poetry = type of literature be a good answer, or would it just be simple common sense that any kind of poetry is literature? Thank you

[Bob O'Halloran]

Hi Lsatstudying11,
Thank you for your question.
The stimulus in this question contains a conditional conclusion, "if one regards as legitimate the imagist poems" which echoes your statement.
You are correct that this condition is necessary for the argument to make sense.
Please let us know if you have additional questions.
Bob