#24 - Until recently it was thought that ink used before the

[Coleman]

Hi,

the contradiction posed by two arguments in the last sentence is still not clear to me. I think the crux of the problem here lies in "the presence of titanium in the ink of the purportedly 15th century Vinland Map can no longer be regarded as a reason for doubting the Map's authenticity." In other words, it can be said that titanium ink has been a major reason that questions the authenticity of the Map since most of the maps drawn in the 15th century were not supposed to contain titanium ink.
However, if we draw that the presence of titanium ink can be regarded as a reason that validates the authenticity of the Map, isn't this a stretch from the previous statement? Although this claim hinges on "commonality or typicalness" of titanium ink in the 15th century, I don't see it as appropriate to infer that titanium ink makes the Map as authentic material from the previous statement.

Could you clarify or just paraphrase the last sentence to help my understanding?

[bearcats123]

Hello,

Can someone explain to me why it is not E. I understand why A is correct. I limited the answers down to A and E, however, I chose E even though I wasn't certain. My thought process (I feel was a stretch) but went a little like this:

If titanium was in the Vinland Map and was from the fifteenth century and being debated if it had the ink, then how could the ink in the famous Bible and another Bible, B-36, prove that the Vinland Map has titanium if the Vinland map could be thought to have had the ink before? Wouldn't that be a flaw that the author took something to prove another thing when the second thing being the Vinland Map may have occurred prior and that way the evidence that the argument rests on falls apart? I think I am overthinking this, but both answers make sense to me and it is bothering me since obviously there can only be one correct answer haha. I would appreciate any feedback and help!

Thank you!!

[Adam Tyson]

The author isn't trying to prove whether the Vinland map did or did not have titanium ink, bearcats123. The author is suggesting that the Vinland map, which DOES have titanium ink, may be authentic and not some sort of modern forgery, and is also suggesting that B-36 may have been printed by Guttenberg, since Guttenberg did use titanium ink in another bible that has been authenticated.

A Flaw in the Reasoning answer has to be true, by which I mean it has to describe something that actually occurred in the stimulus. In addition, the answer has to be some sort of a problem that would hurt the argument and make the author say "oops, my bad, I should have thought of that." Let's analyze answer E in light of that two-part test. If it fails either part, it's a wrong answer.

Is it true that "the discovery of titanium in the ink of the Vinland Map must have occurred before titanium was discovered in the ink of the Gutenberg Bible and the B-36 Bible"? It certainly seems that way from the way the stimulus is written. The titanium in the ink of the two bibles was recent, thanks to the new type of analysis, and it seems like the Vinland Map's titanium ink has been known for a while and has been the source of doubts about its authenticity. So this answer does appear to pass the first test for a good Flaw answer.

Now the second test: is that a problem? Would our author hang his head in shame and say "oh darn, I really messed that up, sorry, please forgive me for being so wrong."? Or would the author say "well yeah, the titanium ink was discovered in the Vinland map a long time ago, and that's why we doubted that it was authentic, but new information has us rethinking that. So what, what's your point?" I think the latter is the more likely reaction - so what if the titanium ink in the map has been known about for a while longer than the ink in the bibles? That does no harm to the conclusion that maybe the map is legit after all, and that we should stop doubting it.

Having failed the second test, answer E is not a good Flaw answer, and we can toss it away. No problem, so not a flaw!

Try that two-part test on your contenders to Flaw questions in the future and see if it helps you sort out the good ones from the bad a little easier. Good luck, keep at it!

[cleocleozuo]

Thank you for the explanation! I am still not quite sure why the Vinland map cannot be printed by Gutenberg as well? Is it because the stimulus said the map is "purportedly" from the 15th century so that it implies its unknown origin?

Many thanks!

Hi Lathlee,

This is actually an example of an internal contradiction/inconsistency flaw. How? The stimulus draws two essentially opposite inferences from the same premise that the heretofore unknown use of titanium in ink prior to the 16th century is in fact present in two early books, the Gutenberg Bible and B-36. From that evidence, it concludes that Gutenberg printed B-36 (implying that only Gutenberg was using ink containing titanium at the time) and that the Vinland Map is authentic and was drawn in the 15th century, because its ink contains titanium. We can infer from its dubious provenance that the map's creator is unknown, and likely not Gutenberg. So the stimulus cannot logically use the presence of titanium to show that B-36 was printed by Gutenberg and to prove that the Vinland Map was authentic.

Hope this helps!

[Robert Carroll]

cleo,

I think the map could have been printed by Gutenberg, given the facts, but there are two things to note:

1. Nothing indicates that the author wants the map to be printed by Gutenberg. It's not any part of the author's conclusion that the map is even possibly printed by Gutenberg. So while the facts in the stimulus don't exclude it, the author never expressed any desire to prove such a point.

2. The hypothesis that the map was printed by Gutenberg is actually problematic for the author's argument. The author is trying to make points about the respective provenances of B-36 and the Vinland map. About B-36, the author's argument (simplified) is: "Titanium ink was so rare in the 15th century that, if we find something printed using it, it was probably printed by Gutenberg. It's unlikely it was someone else, because Gutenberg was one of the few people using titanium ink at the time." About the Vinland map, the author's argument is something like: "Titanium ink wasn't really that rare in the 15th century. If you see something printed with titanium ink, it's not automatically a fake just because of that. It's true that titanium ink is more common now, but it was still very commonly used in the 15th century, so examples purportedly from the 15th century with titanium ink are probably legitimate."

The options for the Vinland map seem to be "fake, because titanium ink is really common now but vanishingly rare back in the 15th century" or "real, because titanium ink was common in the 15th century." The B-36 logic relies on titanium ink being rare, so if we're going to grant that to the author, the logic for the Vinland map doesn't work. You CAN claim that the Vinland map was also printed by Gutenberg, but then you lose any justification for the Vinland map based on widespread adoption of titanium ink.

So, that the Vinland map is printed by Gutenberg undermines the author's evidence in one way or the other, so, while it's a possibility, it's not a GOOD possibility for the author's reasoning.

I also think it's important to note that the Vinland map is "purportedly 15th century", unlike B-36, which the author seems to think is definitely 15th century. So in the B-36 case, the missing info to infer is who printed it. In the Vinland map case, we also have to prove when it was printed. So saying "Gutenberg printed the Vinland map" now simply assumes that the dating of the Vinland map is accurate, something that seemed to be at issue and not a point the author assumed.

Robert Carroll

[cleocleozuo]

Got it, thank you very much!

[NeenStudies]

Hello!

I somehow got this question right, I don't know how. I mean I do know how but I am not sure if I even read the stimulus in the right manner (if that makes sense). When dealing with FIR questions, I always read it super abstract, almost replacing the contents of the sentence with "Bla is doing bla, so bla lead to bla", (not exactly like that though, but somewhere along those lines). So, I read that "titanium is rare before the 16th C, then it makes XYZ a special piece since it has titanium. Now we know some Map is authentic because it has Titanium". This stimulus just went from, "is titanium common back in the day?" to "titanium makes this a cool rare bible" to "this random map is now authentic". It's almost as if they used different points to reach a random conclusion. So, I just knew theres contradiction here, and (A) explains that most similarly.

Was my thought process wrong? What should I do going forward?

PS: good luck to everyone studying, and thank you PowerScore staff for all the help you guys do!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Neenstudies,

Thinking about these stimuli in an abstract way is a great way to do things, and you'll start to get more accurate with your descriptions with practice. Here, I'd say we start with the idea that titanium was thought to not be present in ink prior to the 16th century. But look! We see it in the Gutenberg Bible, but few other books other than a book called B-36. Because it was rare, B-36 must have been from Gutenberg's press. And, since we know there was titanium in ink in the 16th Century, it helps to authenticate the Vinland Map.

In abstract terms, we have an element was surprisingly present in a certain timeframe, though it was extremely rare, therefore we can use it's presence to date a work to that time period. The titanium in the argument is used both for the rareness and for the commonality. It can't both be rare and common at the same time. That's answer choice (A)'s description.

It's great here that you were able to find that contradiction. Even if you don't have a whole abstracted version of the stimulus, identifying the flaw as a contradiction is a critical step. I often just abstractly describe the flaw as my prephrase, because that's where I want my focus to be in the answer choices.

Hope that helps!

[NeenStudies]

Hello Rachel,

thank you for your guidance. I really appreciate it as I often get puzzled on how to tackle questions correctly.

In this stimulus, how do we know about the map being common? I kind of guessed it here by the tone of the author and just the nature of the document at hand: a map is just a map. But going forward, how should I have actually understood that it was a common document?

Thanks!
neen

[KelseyWoods]

Hi Neen!

It's not that the map is common--it's that the titanium is something the B-36 and the Vinland Map have in common. Both the B-36 and the Vinland Map have titanium, so that is a commonality between them.

Basically the author is saying that the presence of titanium is rare enough that it proves the B-36 was specifically printed by Gutenberg. But then the author states that the presence of titanium ink in the Vinland Map is no longer a reason to doubt its authenticity, which means the author is suggesting that titanium was common enough in fifteenth century inks that it should not be used to conclude that documents containing titanium in their ink were not published during that time period.

Put another way, the author is saying: "The presence of titanium in ink in the 15th century is so rare and so specific that anything printed in the 15th century using this ink must have been printed specifically by this one printer (Gutenberg). But, oh yeah, now that we have a 15th century document that has titanium in its ink, then anything that has titanium in the ink might also be from the 15th century." We can't say that titanium is so rare that anything containing titanium must have come from one printer and then also say that titanium in the 15th century was common enough that we're not going to use it to doubt the authenticity of other printed materials.

So, again, the point is not that the map is common. It's that the titanium is common (and also rare, hence the flaw) and that the B-36 and the Vinland Map have the titanium in common.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey