#11 - Art critic: The Woerner Journalism Award for criticism

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Strengthen—PR. The correct answer choice is (B)

According to the author, Paulsen’s car reviews do not merit the Woerner Journalism Award for criticism. Cars are not works of art, she argues, and therefore do not reveal important truths about the culture that produced them. Because of this, the author concludes that Paulsen’s reviews are not criticism, and consequently do not merit receiving a criticism award.

The author’s argument is fairly complex, and—when re-worded—is structured as follows:

• Premise (1): Cars are utilitarian things, not works of art.
  
  Premise (2): Objects that are not works of art do not reveal important truths about the culture that produced them.
  
  Sub. Conclusion: Paulsen’s reviews are not criticism.
  
  Premise (3): The criticism award should be given for criticism.
  
  Conclusion: The criticism award should not be given to Paulsen.

Note that the question stem is a Strengthen—PR, not a Justify—PR because of the presence of the word “most,” which weakens the force required of the correct answer. In Strengthen—PR questions, the correct answer choice provides a broad premise that, when applied to the specific situation in the stimulus, helps support the conclusion.

As a general rule, when prephrasing a principle that can be used to draw the conclusion, look for any logical gaps or deficiencies in the argument that need to be fixed. The major gap here is between the first two premises and the sub-conclusion of the argument. Since the author never explicitly defined what “criticism” is, you must select a principle that shows why Paulsen’s car reviews cannot appropriately be regarded as criticism. Once we establish that Paulsen’s reviews are not criticism, the conclusion would logically follow from it.

To identify the precise language of the missing link, consider the conditional relationships that structure this argument:

• Premises (1) + (2): Cars Works of Art Reveal Truths
  
  Sub. Conclusion: Car reviews Criticism

The correct answer choice must form a link between the necessary condition in the premise chain and that in the conclusion:

• Reveal Truths Criticism

In other words, we need to establish that reviews of objects that do not reveal important truths about the culture that produced them cannot be regarded as criticism. Answer choice (B) contains the statement that is closest to this prephrase, and answer choice (B) is correct.

Answer choice (A): This principle falls outside the scope of this argument, because Paulsen never tried to portray utilitarian objects (such as cars) as works of art. Your approach to Strengthen—PR questions should not be limited to “matching” specific keywords in the stimulus to keywords in the answer choices.

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice. If reviews of objects cannot appropriately be considered to be criticism unless the objects reveal some important truths, and cars clearly do not reveal these truths, then car reviews cannot be regarded as criticism. After applying the Unless Equation, this principle can be diagrammed as follows:

• Criticism Reveal Truths

Because this answer choice is the contrapositive of our prephrase, it successfully connects the premises to the conclusion of the argument.

Answer choice (C): This is an attractive answer choice, and after applying the Unless Equation, the principle in it can be diagrammed as follows:

• Criticism Purpose to Reveal Truths

This principle focuses on whether the intended purpose of writing a review is to reveal important truths about the writer’s culture, not on whether the objects of the review actually reveal such truths. This marks an unwarranted shift from actual to intended result. The premises in this stimulus only establish a result: cars cannot reveal important truths about the culture that produced them. The author remained silent on whether or not Paulsen intended for her reviews to reveal such truths.

Answer choice (D): This principle has no bearing on the author’s reasoning, because we do not know whether Nan Paulsen considered herself to be a critic.

Answer choice (E): This is the Mistaken Negation of our prephrase. Even if all writing that reveals important truths about a culture qualifies as criticism, that does not mean that only such writing qualifies as criticism. So, even if Paulsen’s reviews reveal no important truths, this principle would still allow us to regard her writing as a form of criticism.
Be careful not to select an answer just because you would agree with the general proposition in it. Since the nature of the question forces you to identify the answer that best justifies the author’s position, your personal views should have no role when selecting an answer choice.

[starre]

For this question, I originally cancelled out all the answers. When going back through, I picked C. I had cancelled out B because using the term "objects" for "utilitarian things" seemed too general. Could you explain why B is correct?

Thank you,
Emily

[Clay Cooper]

Hi Emily,

Thanks for your question.

Answer choice B is correct because it tells us what criticism is. The author concludes that she shouldn't have received the award because her writing was not criticism. What, though, is criticism? The author says that cars are not art and that anything that is not art does not reveal important truths. It seems, therefore, that the author is assuming that any writing that does not discuss objects that reveal important truths cannot be criticism.

Answer choice B makes this assumption explicit: if it were true, then the author's conclusion is well-proven.

On questions like this one, I find it helpful to name the missing link (here, what is criticism?) and then to try to prephrase an answer in the form of a rule that will take the evidence that hasn't been used (cars are not art, because art reveals important truths) and connects it to the missing link. In this question, that allows us to predict what the answer choice will look like: it will tell us that, in order to be criticism, writing must discuss things that reveal important truths.

This is, essentially, the justify formula from the book - I would encourage you to review it to help your understanding on questions like this one.

I hope that helps! Keep working hard.

[starre]

Thank you!

[bli2016]

Hi, for this question I got the right answer intuitively, but I was stuck for a moment when I tried to diagram the stimulus using conditional reasoning. Does this stimulus not lend itself to diagramming?

[Francis O'Rourke]

Hi Bli,

You can diagram this one if you'd like. When I first read it I had a sense that the author's discussion was going somewhere, but it just ended up at a dead end: cars don't reveal important truths about their culture.... so what?! I thought you were going to tell us that she didn't write criticism!

If you felt the same then you should have tried to connect this dangling element - not revealing truth - to something in the stimulus - criticism. If you didn't see that the argument went absolutely no where, and you thought that the author connected all the dots, then diagramming it may help you recognize that we have unconnected elements that we need to fix with the answer choice.

[cornflakes]

Hi,

I was a sucker and selected C here - I read the explanation and it does make sense why B is correct over C. The difference between what makes C wrong and B right, however, seems very subtle and difficult to detect on a repeatable basis. I can understand the underlying rationale of differentiating intended purpose and intrinsically revealing something, but is this truly the only difference between each answer choice? Looking through the logical chains for both, and how I diagrammed them myself, they both seem to connect this idea of not revealing (whether purposely or intrinsically) about the culture that produced them to not being criticism. The logic for both seems to flow in the correct direction to lend itself to a justify answer.

I'm trying to understand if there are any alternative traits or characteristics that make C incorrect, outside of the "purpose" idea. I sometimes find that the answers explanations on here do make sense for the particular problem they apply to, but I'm looking to see if someone can provide something additional or global that I can take with me from problem to problem.

Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

Although we shouldn't need another reason why answer C is incorrect, cornflakes, there is one. Answer C is specifically about "the writer's culture," whereas the author's position is focused on the culture that produced the thing being criticized. So the author might not care where the writer is from, so long as their writing reveals important truths about the culture being written about. Put in concrete terms, an Egyptian writer could write about Icelandic sculpture and reveal important things about Icelandic culture that reveal nothing at all about Egyptian culture, and that would still fit within this author's view of what criticism is. Answer C is therefore focused on the wrong culture!

But back to the idea of purpose, I want to try a little mental exercise. Imagine you are having a conversation with someone else who has just read this stimulus. The conversation goes like this:

You: What was Nan Paulsen's purpose when she chose to review automobiles? Base your answer only on the text.

Them: I don't know It doesn't say why she wrote them.

End of conversation..

Answer C is a bad answer because we know nothing of her purpose, and therefore this answer has nothing to do with the argument! It's really as simple as that, as if often the case on LR questions. Actions don't prove intentions, intentions don't prove outcomes, etc. Be aware of gaps like those, and you will be much less likely to fall into them!

[cornflakes]

Hi Adam,

This makes sense now on the second read - thank you for clarifying. This to be a good example of the "shell game" idea that is discussed in the LR bible, that being something that looks closely similar in many ways but is not the same thing. It's about the object culture and if the criticism actually reveals important truths about that culture, not about the purpose of the critiquing individual or their criticism revealing truths about the culture they come from.

I think the reason I missed this was because I was so focused on the conditional chains with the unless statements in each. After I confirmed that both logical chains were essentially equivalent (if we were to assume the flawed answer choice had the right terms in it), I should have moved on to examining the elements a bit more closely.

Thanks!