#16 - There is a difference between beauty and truth. After

[Robert Carroll]

ashpine,

The Administrator's post at the start of this thread does provide a structural approach.

Robert Carroll

[ashpine17]

Is there a way to approach this intuitively, aka no diagramming? This is one instance in which I feel that diagramming makes it more confusing and cluttered

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Ashpine, if I was going to do this without diagramming, I would focus on the difference between the premise(s) and the conclusion. The conclusion is that there's a difference between beauty and truth. The premise is that the most realistic art is the most truthful, therefore it would be the best. I would focus on the idea that best is different than beautiful, and I'd like the answer to address that gap between the premise and conclusion. I know the argument assumes a link between beauty and "best" in artwork, and therefore, I would prephrase something to make that connection.

Hope that helps!

[sxzhao]

I understand the logical gap apparently exists between Best and Most Beautiful
We're already told not all Most Realistic (which is also the most Truthful) are the Best, so to bridge the gap, we need "Best paintings are the Most Beautiful paintings", which would give us the perfect reasoning: not all most truthful are the most beautiful.

Choice A tho, walks the logical bridge the opposite way, i.e., MB - > Best ... why isn't it a problem here?

[Adam Tyson]

That's not a problem here, sxzhao, because it's not a conditional statement, but a statement of equivalence. "The most beautiful are the best" and "the best are the most beautiful" mean the same thing as each other, because both statements set the two ideas - best and most beautiful - as equal to each other.

If we were looking for an answer that said "if it's beautiful, then it is good," we would not want a reversal that said "if it is good, then it is beautiful." But since we're looking for an answer that equates the two things, we don't have that problem with this answer.

[attorneyatpaw]

Complete Question Explanation

Answer choice (A) establishes this connection. Note the important nuance "most." The premises concern the fact that the most realistic art is the most truthful. We must match this concept of "most" to establish the incongruity between the concepts of truth and beauty. If we break the link by showing that the most truthful cannot also be the most beautiful, then our job is done: there must be a difference between truth and beauty.

Hello! I'm having a hard time understanding why the nuance of "most" in answer choice (A) is important? Why is it important to say "most beautiful" rather than just "beautiful"? I see that the word "most" is used to qualify "realistic" and "truthful" in the stimulus but I still don't understand why "beautiful" also needs to be qualified in the same way. Would (A) be incorrect if it simply said, "Beautiful artworks are the best artworks"?

I easily narrowed down the contenders to answer choices (A) and (D) but I got this one wrong because I couldn't conceptualize what effect the Negation of each answer choice had on the argument. Do you have advice for getting better this? Thank you!

[Jeff Wren]

Hi attorneyatpaw,

It is important that the word "most" is used in the answer to correctly link to the other terms in the argument. And the answer would not be correct just using "beautiful" because the argument does not require that all beautiful works are the best, only that the "most beautiful" are the best. In other words, there may be artworks that are beautiful but not quite the best, and that is completely fine with the argument. After all, "the best" is a pretty high bar.

It can be difficult to follow the logic of this argument partly because of the complex structure of the argument, partly because of the order of the premises and the conclusion, and partly because there is a missing piece in the logic (which the correct answer will fill in).

It may be helpful to go through the reasoning of this argument, rearranging the order a bit for clarity.

The argument starts by supposing what would happen if beauty equals truth. (To be clear, this isn't the first thing that happens in the stimulus, but this is where the reasoning starts.)

If beauty equals truth, then the most truthful art would also mean the most beautiful art. (This is not stated in the stimulus, but is implied/assumed).
Premise: The most realistic pieces of art are the most truthful.
Answer A (the missing link) The most beautiful artworks are the best.

Sub Conclusion: If beauty equals truth, then the most realistic would be the best.

So far so good, if beauty equals truth (and we add in Answer A, the missing assumption), then we can go from most realistic to most truthful to most beautiful to best in a logical chain.

But we're not done yet.

We then get another premise that states that many of the most realistic artworks are NOT the best, which is the opposite of what would be true if beauty equals truth.

Given this new fact, then using the contrapositive, it must be that beauty does NOT equal truth, which is the conclusion of the argument (i.e. there is a difference between beauty and truth).

Negating Answer A would give us, "the most beautiful artworks are not necessarily the best artworks." This would completely destroy the line of reasoning and the argument. If that were true, then the fact many of the most realistic artworks are NOT the best would in no way shows that beauty does not equal truth.

Negating Answer D would give us "Not only the best artworks are beautiful." In other words, beautiful artwork doesn't have to be the best. As discussed above, that is fine and doesn't hurt the argument at all.

[attorneyatpaw]

Thank you for your response! For some reason the word "most" in answer choice (A) is still really tripping me up. But your explanation has made it clear that it's critical to solving this question correctly.

My error may be that I'm thinking about beauty as being binary— either it is or it isn't beautiful, instead of thinking of it in a continuum where "most beautiful" is distinct from "beautiful."

So if I'm to understand this correctly.. let's say that theoretically it was possible to accurately rate the truthfulness or beautifulness of a piece of artwork using the same scale. In that case, in order to conclude that beauty and truth have no difference, an artwork that was rated 9/10 in truthfulness (or realistic-ness) would also need to be rated 9/10 in beautifulness? If, on the other hand, its beauty rating was actually 7/10, then it wouldn’t be the same as its truth rating, therefore demonstrating that there is a difference between beauty and truth. Is that the gist of the argument?

Also, if answer (D) had just included the qualifer "most," would it have been correct? ex.:

"Only the best artworks are the *most* beautiful"

Because the negation: NOT only the best artworks are the most beautiful, would imply that an artwork can be the most beautiful without being the best.

So, in other words, the word "most" is the only thing that distinguishes answer (A) as correct over answer (D)?

Thank you!

[Jeff Wren]

Hi attorneyatpaw,

It looks like you've got it!

Yes, thinking of "beauty" as binary would be a mistake in this argument, which is about degrees of beauty, truth, etc..

Just as the word "best" is not the same as the word "good," the words "most beautiful" are not the same as "beautiful."

The entire argument is about superlative qualities "most realistic, most truthful, most beautiful, best."

Yes, if there were no difference between truth and beauty, then the scores of each would be identical because the terms would be identical in meaning, so a different score would indicate that there is a difference between the terms.

And yes, if you changed Answer D to "most beautiful," it would be basically be equivalent to Answer A.

[ashpine17]

The last statement is mot important is it? What is it for