#24 - There is little point in looking to artists for

[Megan Rogers]

Hey, I have a problem with the question no. 4 (found in October 1991, LR Sec 1, #24)

According to the stimulus, I diagrammed as follows:
'Most of them (artists) hold political views... well-educated person who is not an artist.'
Artists Holding political views that are less insightful than those of any reasonably well-educated person who is not an artist.

So from this I thought that we could say this:
Artists less insightful political views than a well-educated person who is not an artists.

However, the correct answer choice (E) seems opposite of what I was looking for.
I thought that 'no' from the choice should be gone.

Can someone please help me with this one?

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi Megan!

Great question. The trick to this one is understanding that MOST is not the same as ALL; MOST indicates there are some who do no fit the description. In this case, that means there is at least one artist who is at least as politically insightful as some reasonably well-educated person who is not an artist. That's what E is saying; there are some artists who are no less politically insightful than well-educated non-artists, because the description of artists provided applies only to most artists, not to all.

Does that help?

[Megan Rogers]

Hey, Emily, first of all, thank you so much for your incredibly quick response!

And as a matter of fact I still have an unresovled problem with this question...

You mentioned that Most is NOT the same as All.
I know that this is indeed true in normal day to day situations that we experience. This is how I used to perceive the definition of 'Most' before I studied for the LSAT.

However, I am afraid that what you mentioned above (Most is not All) sounds a tad conflicting from what I have learned from Logical reasoning Bible.

According to the Bible (p. 307), Most DOES include the possibility of All. So, I believe that we shouldn't preclude this particular possibility of All here unless it's explicitly indicated or stated in a stimulus.

However, I am afraid that I can't possibility see any particular terms or expressions from the stimulus that state that 'Most does not include the possibility of All' and there are indeed 'Some' artists who are as politically insightful as well-educated non artists.

Am I missing something here?

Thanks in advance!

[Lucas Moreau]

Hello, Megan,

It is indeed true that MOST may possibly include ALL. If there are ten people in a room and they are all male, it is both true that MOST of the people in the room are male and that ALL of the people in the room are male.

However, on the LSAT itself, MOST is almost never used in that deliberately deceptive fashion. As Emily said, if you see MOST on the LSAT, it indicates that there are some that aren't described by MOST. Not to say that it's completely impossible that a question will ever try to hoodwink you in this fashion - but I've never personally seen a question do such a thing, and it's probably a quite safe bet that MOST means Not!ALL.

Hope that helps,
Lucas Moreau

[June.K]

Hello,

I've stumbled on this question while going through the LR Question Type Training booklet.

I know in my head the answer makes sense, but when applying the concepts I learned from LR Bible Chapter 13 on Formal Logic, I find it hard to prove that the answer is 100% correct.

The main reason is because of the numerical representation of the word "most" on page 405 of the LR Bible, which states that "most" is equivalent to 51 to 100.

Coming back to the question at hand, which states that we can infer that "some artists are no less politically insightful than some reasonably well-educated persons who are not artists", I find it hard to prove this when considering the possibility that all (100) artists hold political views that are less insightful than those of any reasonably well-educated person who is not an artist as the stimulus states.

Please help!!

Kindly,
June

[Francis O'Rourke]

Hi June,

You are right that it is impossible to prove answer choice (E) from the first two sentences. However, the stimulus is using language in a very interesting way in the final sentence. The very last statement says that artists' statements indicate that it is rare to find artistic talent and political insight in the same person.

In everyday usage, we think of the word "rare" as diminishing the frequency of an event occurring, so you may miss the fact that the speaker is telling us that there are some rare artists who have artistic talent and political insight. In other words, the word "rarely" in this sentence sets a minimum number as well: there is at least one person who both is a talented artist and has an insightful political mind.

Since we know that there is at least one person, we can agree with answer choice (E) that there are some artists who are somewhat politically insightful.

let me know if this helps

[June.K]

Hi Francis,

Many thanks for your reply above.

I've definitely been focusing more on the first two sentences and thank you for pointing out the last sentence. However, I'm still having trouble in proving that the correct answer is (E) even when considering the last sentence.

To elaborate, I agree with your point that the use of the word 'rarely' does set a floor (at least one) on the number of artist that have political insight. However, I still think there may be a possibility that even in the event that there is indeed an artist that has political insight, such artist may have a less insightful political view when compared to any reasonably well-educated person who is not an artist.

Again, I know that the answer does make sense in my head, but I still can't find a way to prove it 100% and given that this question is a formal logic question, I do want to be quite confident in selecting an answer!

I hope I'm explaining my confusion in a way that makes sense...thanks once again in advance for your kind reply!

[AthenaDalton]

Hi June,

If you're not confident in your answer choice, you can double-check your work by eliminating incorrect answer choices. Answer choices (A) and (C) are easily eliminated because they use sweeping language like "none" and "every" that is not supported by the stimulus. Answer choice (B) can be easily eliminated because it directly contradicts what the stimulus states. Finally, answer choice (D) can be eliminated because we do not receive information about politicians' artistic talent (or lack thereof) from the stimulus.

As to your question about the possibility of an artist having less political insight than any well-educated person -- you may be over-interpreting what's being presented in the stimulus. The stimulus doesn't say that no artists have political insight. It's saying that they are, on the whole, less insightful than well-educated non-artists. It isn't such a stretch to imagine that at least one artist is "no less insightful" (or equally insightful) as at least one well-educated non-artist. The stimulus's use of the words "most," "taken as a whole," and "rare" leave plenty of room for at least one artist to be on par with a well-educated non-artist.

I hope this helps clear things up for you. Good luck with the test!

Athena Dalton

[tsolovey]

Hi!

I got this question correct but I spent some time trying to figure out how to diagram (and came up with basically nothing). Once I went through the answer choices and easily found the correct one, I wondered if I even should have bothered trying to diagram this. How would you go about attacking this question and if you diagram it, what does that look like?


Thanks so much!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi TS

You are correct that it is a formal logic question, though it is not one I would necessarily diagram out.

To diagram it out, you want to look for formal logic indicator language. Here, the first key term is "most." Most indicates more than half, or in numerical terms, 51-100%. To diagram out the "most artists" phrase, you could draw something like this:

Artists Less insightful than reasonably educated non-artist

But in this case, we can't really link that with anything useful elsewhere in the stimulus, at least not in a formal logic chain.

However, we can gain key insight from the last sentence, where it states that artistic talent and political insight rarely go together. What does rarely mean here? We can think of rarely as something that occurs, but not often. But since it occurs, that means it happens at least once. That leads us down to answer choice (E), that at least one artist has some political insight.

Overall, I think this question is easier answered without diagramming out the formal logic, but with a good understanding of the meaning of the quantity terms "most," "some" and "rare."

Hope that helped!
Rachael