#24 - It has been said that authors who write in order to

[freddythepup]

Hi, while the explanations for D have been very thorough, and I get that there is a distinct difference between Author's intent to give pleasure, vs. the evidence provided, which does not talk about intent. When I negate D, I get: "A book may give pleasure even if the author did not intend to give pleasure," I still don't get how this weakens the argument. Even if a book did give pleasure when the author didn't mean to give pleasure, how does this really impact the argument/why would the argument fall apart? As it is using a sales figure/popularity example to refute the claim that pleasure can't impart truth to readers. Can you please explain this? Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

Sure thing, Freddy! If it is possible for a book to give pleasure when the author did not write it with the intention of doing so, then the fact that some books are popular would tell us nothing about what the authors of those books intended. While that popularity might indicate that they give some pleasure, and while our author appears to assume that at least some of them have some truth in them, it could be that none of them were intended to give pleasure? If so, then his evidence has no bearing on the claim that those who try to give pleasure cannot impart truth. The popular books that impart truth might not have been written to give pleasure after all. The argument no longer holds.

Put another way, the author thinks it is possible to do both - give pleasure and impart truth. His evidence is that some books that DO give pleasure ALSO impart truth. He has to assume that those books were intended to give pleasure, based solely on the evidence that their sales figures suggest that they did, in fact, give pleasure. But what if they weren't so intended? What if they gave pleasure despite a complete absence of intention to do so?.

This is a tough one, and Nikki's discussion of it is excellent. Go through that again and see if it doesn't make more sense to you now, and let us know if further help is required. We'll be here.

[HecubaElliot]

I'm still a little thrown by this one. I put D as the answer by guessing (!), and I read through Nikki's initial response in depth, but I am still thrown. I am confused by the fact that D reads:

Gives pleasure ---> intended by author to give pleasure


Wouldn't we need it to be the opposite? IE: intended by author to give pleasure ---> Gives pleasure

Don't we need the sufficient condition to be the intention? I'm all over the place here

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi HecubaElliot,

Let's take a closer look at answer choice (D). You correctly draw out the answer choice as given---if a book gives pleasure, then it was intended to do so. We can analyze it using the Assumption Negation Techniquetm to see what impact that would have on our argument. To negate the conditional, we imagine that a book gives pleasure, but it was not intended to do so. How does that impact the argument? It would weaken it because it would mean that we couldn't draw the connection between sales numbers/pleasure and the author's intent while writing. Since the negated form of the answer choice weakens our argument, the answer choice must be correct.

We don't need to know that if a book is intended to give pleasure, it actually does so. To negate your proposed answer (if intends pleasure, then gives pleasure) we would imagine a scenario where a writer intends a book to give pleasure, but it does not. This has no bearing on the argument, because the argument is focused on the situation where an author intends to give pleasure, and the book actually does so (as seen by sales numbers). If the book doesn't give people pleasure, the final sentence/conclusion wouldn't be relevant or triggered by the conditional proposed.

Hope that helps!
Rachael

[PB410]

Hi,
I was able to recognize that the reasoning assumes that because something is popular it gives pleasure, yet we don't know if it was the author's intent or not to give pleasure. The beginning refers to authors who write in order to give pleasure, which is missing in the second part of the argument. I am struggling with how this hurts the conclusion, that the claim that readers who write in order to give pleasure cannot impart the truth of the subject matter cannot be true. Does the answer weaken the reasoning given to support the conclusion, and therefore doesn't allow the conclusion to follow? Wouldn't that be attacking a premise rather than the conclusion? I was able to come across this answer through process of elimination, but am having trouble tying the correct answer to the conclusion.
Thanks

[Claire Horan]

Hi PB410,

Pay close attention to the question type. This is an assumption question. This means that we are looking for an answer choice that is required (is a necessary premise) for the conclusion to work. The other posts on this thread do a great job of explaining how to use the Assumption Negation Technique. Once you've identified an assumption question and narrowed it down to a few choices, that's a great technique to use. First, though, you need to identify the question type and identify what you are looking for in the correct answer. (In the case of an assumption question, you are looking for a necessary premise.)

I hope this helps!

[lsatfighter]

Here's my analysis of this whole question.

Sentence 1 - Intend to give pleasure ----> Not impart truth
Sentence 2 - "That claim cannot be true" indicates: Intend to give pleasure ----> Impart truth
Sentence 3 - "If it (the claim) were (true)" indicates: Intend to give pleasure ----> Not impart truth
Sentence 4 - Very popular ----> Gave pleasure ----> Not impart truth

When reading sentence 1 of the stimulus, we can see that "in order to give pleasure" is just another way of saying "intending to give pleasure." And from the conditional diagrams above, we can see that sentences 3 and 4 have the common necessary condition of "not impart truth." Furthermore, in sentences 3 and 4, the two different sufficient conditions of "not impart truth" are "intend to give pleasure" and "gave pleasure", respectively. These two sufficient conditions are linked together in answer choice D, making it the correct answer.

Answer choice A is wrong, because it violates sentence 4. If a book is very popular, then there's a good chance that people KNOW that it might give them pleasure.

Answer choice B is wrong, because failing to achieve the goal of giving people pleasure is out of scope with the stimulus. The negation of B is "When an author writes with the goal of giving people pleasure, that goal will be achieved." This negation doesn't destroy the argument, it falls in line with the argument.

Answer choice C is wrong, because the level of CONCERN about the truth of a book's contents is irrelevant to the stimulus.

Answer choice E is wrong, because other reasons for a book's popularity is irrelevant to the stimulus.

And just to make sure, is the second sentence the conclusion? Does this argument have an intermediate conclusion? If so, then is the intermediate conclusion "therefore at least some of what is written in the book is not true"? Can you give me some tips or advice on how to better identify the main conclusion & intermediate conclusion in an argument? And finally, are there any flaws with my analysis of this question?

[lsatfighter]

Hello. I have not yet received a reply for my post about this question. If someone can please reply and help me out, I'd appreciate it. Thank you.

[Adam Tyson]

Your analysis is mostly pretty good, fighter, but "this claim cannot be true" does not mean that the opposite must be true. Instead of "intend to give pleasure impart truth", the better way to think of that claim is that "not imparting truth" isn't required. That is, you can intend to give pleasure, and you may or may not impart truth. Nothing is necessary.

The main conclusion is the statement that gets all the support and gives none. It's what the author is driving at or trying to prove. Intermediate conclusions, when they exist in an argument, get some support and then in turn support the main conclusion. This argument doesn't have one! There is no statement that the author seeks to show is true, which in turn supports the main conclusion.

To better identify main and intermediate conclusions, pull two claims out of the rest of the argument and put them together to see if one supports the other. That is, see if you can make an argument out of them. If one claim supports the other, the one getting the support is a conclusion. If that claim can then be used to support yet another claim, then the one that both got support and gave support is an intermediate conclusion. The main conclusion will get support from one or more other claims, and will give no support to any other claim. It's selfish that way!

[lanereuden]

This question is so easy!

It basically requires you to see the little nonsense distinction between intending to give and getting
It basically requires you to assume:
I see the effect (they got pleasure), therefore I can assume there was someone who intended to cause this effect
That was my prephrase and thus, D.