#22 - Any writer whose purpose is personal expression

[Imcuffy]

Thanks! It makes more sense. I think part of the confusion was that I was not fully understanding that the conclusion would become my necessary condition and I would need an answer choice, sufficient condition, to prove that conclusion. And by doing this, I would need to link the supporting premise(s) to the conclusion. By that, it often requires a strong prephrase.

[PresidentLSAT]

Hi,

I've read the explanations but I'm starting to think I got this question right by luck.

My instant preface for the answer without going to the answer choices was that you cannot attain a precise understanding of ambiguity. Those two mutually exclusive. "Precise understanding" in the conclusion is what I tied into the premise "ambiguity." Why should have to tie in the "enjoyment" when the argument is about the attainment of a precise understanding.

I ruled out a different reason.

Writers rely on ambiguity when they want to resort to personal expression. That doesn't rule out the plausibility that writers use ambiguity when they want to express other stuff, i.e cultural issues, history, foreign affairs etc. In this case, they may use words ambiguously because it's a campaign speech, and the vaguer you are, the more of a wider audience you can reach. In this case, how do you justify that voters won't try to understand precisely what you're saying?

My reasoning for A made C more confusing.

I settled with it because my assumption is that ambiguity and precise understanding are mutually exclusive. C sort of describes that. Please help

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi PresidentLSAT,

You are dancing right around the correct reasoning here, so don't think of it as a luck. Give yourself credit for the work you've done!

Your prephrase had some of the key ideas you needed, but was missing one aspect---the idea of the reader's enjoyment.

Let's jump in at the beginning.

P1: writer whose purpose is personal expression sometimes ambiguous
P2: poet purpose is personal expression
Deduction: Poet personal expression sometimes ambiguous

C: poetry reader's enjoyment NOT precise understanding (i.e.: Ambiguous use of words).

What jumps out to you as new in the conclusion? Hopefully it's the idea of the reader's enjoyment. We don't know ANYTHING about the reader from the premises. So for us to draw a conclusion about the reader's enjoyment, we are going to need a justify answer choice that addresses that new aspect. And that's the key difference here between answer choices (A) and (C).

Hope that helps!

[fortunateking]

I can fully understand why C is the correct answer for this justify question. But what slowed me down is that it seems to be that (A) and (C) are identical. My thought was, for readers whose enjoyment depends on a precise understanding, they have to try to attain a precise understanding (to gain enjoyment), which can be diagrammed as:
readers whose enjoyment depends on a precise understanding→readers who try to attain a precise understanding
So for (A), "writers who write ambiguously have no readers who try to attain a precise understanding" can be transformed to "writers who write ambiguously have no readers whose enjoyment depends on a precise understanding", which makes (A) the same thing as (C).
Where did I go wrong?

[sunshine123]

Howdy,

Say we have the argument,

Premise: A

So, naturally, : B

And say we were asked to find a sufficient assumption for the argument. Would an answer choice that TAKES us to the conclusion, while introducing new information(info that was not in stimulus) as part of its sufficient condition, be enough to justify the conclusion? Would answer choice, if C then B be enough? be correct? If not, why not?

Thanks in advance!

[Adam Tyson]

fortunateking - the problem with answer A is that it makes no connection to "enjoyment." It doesn't matter what they are trying to do; it matters whether they actually do attain that precise understanding and whether that has some impact on their enjoyment. It was a very attractive answer, but we have to deal with the concept of "enjoyment" and should not make any assumptions about it.

Sunshine - it's possible that a good answer would bring up some new idea that was not in the premises that would guarantee the truth of the conclusion. Maybe something like "the only readers whose enjoyment depends on attaining precise understanding are those who read nothing but cookbooks." That may happen on occasion. But most Justify the Conclusion questions are looking for us to close a gap in the argument more directly than that, so always start your attack by looking for that link. here, it should b a link between ambiguous use of words and enjoyment.

[zebrowski]

Hi,

The conclusion can be diagrammed as "poetry reader's enjoyment NOT precise understanding (i.e., ambiguous use of words)."

And Adam Tyson wrote that answer (C) can be diagrammed as "ambiguous use of words NOT poetry reader's enjoyment."

If we were to diagram answer C, it would look like just what we need: use words ambiguously ---> enjoyment depends on understanding

Diagrammed this way, isn't answer (C) the contrapositive of the conclusion?

Also, to forge the link between "ambiguous use of words" and "poetry reader's enjoyment," we need something like "ambiguous use of words poetry reader's enjoyment."

Then, we would have a nice conditional chain "poet personal expression ambiguous use of words poetry reader's enjoyment."

But that conditional chain would be circular because, adding the conclusion, we would end up with "poet personal expression ambiguous use of words poetry reader's enjoyment NOT precise understanding (i.e., ambiguous use of words)."

Where did I go wrong?

[Amber Thomas]

Hi zebrowski!

We can break down our relationships presented in the stimulus as follows:
Premise 1: Personal Expression --> Use Words Ambiguously
Premise 2: Poet --> Personal Expression
Conclusion: No poetry reader's enjoyment depends on obtaining a precise understanding.

This gives us the chain: Poet --> Personal Expression --> Use Words Ambiguously

As Adam Tyson said, Answer Choice C can be diagrammed as: Use Words Ambiguously --> ~Enjoyment Depends on Precise Understanding. This allows us to attach ~Enjoyment Depends on Precise Understanding to the end of our conditional chain, giving us: Poet --> Personal Expression --> Use Words Ambiguously --> ~Enjoyment Depends on Precise Understanding

Remember, our conclusion is Poetry Reader's Enjoyment --> ~Enjoyment Depends on Precise Understanding. The contrapositive to this would be Enjoyment Depends on Precise Understanding --> ~Poetry Reader's Enjoyment.

The condition Poetry Reader's Enjoyment can simply be understood as someone reading a poet's work. It frames our conditions, and gives them a context in which to function. Our stimulus tells us that Poet --> Use Words Ambiguously. Our conclusion tells us that one who reads poetry's enjoyment is not dependent on attaining a precise understanding, or ~Enjoyment Depends on Precise Understanding. The concept of a poetry reader enjoying/not enjoying a work just gives context for this condition, and doesn't have to fit into our conditional relationships. If it helps, you can understand "Poetry Reader" as a subset of the "Poet" condition.

I hope this helps!