#2 - Wanda: It is common sense that one cannot create visual

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below! Thank you!

[sbhimani]

During the test I was stuck between both answer (B) and (D).

I am having trouble understanding why D is wrong, since both B and D are similar. My guess is that the reason it is wrong is because we don't know if piles of laundry and empty soda bottles would be considered as messiness. Is this correct?

[James Finch]

Hi SB,

As a principle question, we need to abstract out the arguments being made by the two speakers in the stimulus. Wanda's argument is that a necessary condition to creating art of a certain medium is having stimuli of that medium inside one's work space (writers have written stimuli, visual artists have visual stimuli, etc.). Vernon's argument accepts that, but adds another necessary condition: quality. He does so by means of an analogy, which he then applies to Wanda's workspace to then question whether it satisifies the quality condition necessary for creating visual art. So we're looking for an answer choice that parallels the principle we've prephrased above.

"Piles of laundry and empty soda bottles" would imply messiness. The real key difference between answer choices (B) and (D) is that (B)'s emphasis on quality of stimuli is reflected in Vernon's analogy of reading good writing vs. supermarket tabloids and his questioning of Wanda's messiness; it isn't messiness per se that Vernon's principle is concerned with but instead the quality of the stimuli surrounding an artist, of which messiness is just one possible example. So answer choice (B) much better reflects that broader principle, as opposed to the much more specific (D).

Hope this clears up!