#24 - Monica: The sculpture commissioned for our town plaza

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Eric,

A small (hopefully not too intrusive!) request for future posts: it would be super helpful (to me and other instructors, I'm sure) if you could wait until you've formulated all your questions about an issue and combined them into one post. Just makes it easier to follow your entire train of thought and to respond appropriately.

On your first comment, I agree that Monica has not explicitly committed herself to disagreement with the principle expressed in answer choice C. Answer choice C is a conditional statement that can be diagrammed as: Remove a work of art commissioned for a public space Balance of public opinion is against the work. The contrapositive is: Balance of public opinion is NOT against the work NOT Remove it. We don't know what Monica thinks the necessary condition would be for removal of a work of art, because she has concluded this work should not be removed. We also don't know (looking at the contrapositive) whether Monica would agree that when the balance of public opinion is NOT against a work of art that it should NOT be removed. That's because the balance of public opinion here IS against this work.

Regarding your next two posts, I first want to congratulate you: you picked the correct answer, so nice work! That means you were able to eliminate the other four answer choices comfortably, which is often the best way to narrow yourself to the best available answer. Notice the movement of Monica's argument: she moves directly from the idea that the public's opinion of this work tells us nothing about its artistic merit to the conclusion that the artwork should not be removed. That means Monica's central consideration guiding her conclusion is what we can determine about the artistic merit of the work in question. She apparently thinks that what would dictate removing an artwork would primarily be the question of whether it has artistic merit. And since we can't (or haven't) determined the artistic merit of the work in this case, we have no basis for saying whether it should be removed (and we should therefore leave it be). So Monica does agree with answer choice E. And as you correctly observed, Hector disagrees with answer choice E. So this is the answer that satisfies the Agree/Disagree Test. Nice work again!

I hope this helps!

[DanielJ1]

I did not choose E because I was confused as to what was meant by "a central consideration". Does a central consideration imply that there can only be one central consideration? If yes, can you provide some tips on how to decipher "LSAT language" to more reasonable language. If no, then how do we know that Hector doesn't hold artistic merit to be a central consideration?

If instead of "a central consideration" answer choice E had said "the most important consideration", I think I would have gotten this question correct. Thank you!

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Daniel,

First, the wording of the Answer E "a central consideration" (my emphasis) rather than "the central consideration" suggests to me that there could be other central considerations.

Even so, this wouldn't impact Answer E as the correct answer.

The definition of the word "central" most relevant to Answer E is "of the greatest importance; principal or essential."

The reason that we know that Hector doesn't hold artistic merit to be a central consideration is that Hector gives artistic merit zero consideration in concluding that the sculpture should be removed. In other words, for Hector, the fact that the public dislikes the sculpture completely determines that it should be removed regardless of its artistic merit.

If Hector believed that artistic merit was a central consideration, then he would presumably need to assess the artistic merit of the sculpture in determining whether or not the sculpture should be removed (and presumably weigh this consideration against any other considerations). The fact that he does not (even though he admits that the sculpture may have artistic merit) indicates what value he places on artistic merit in deciding whether the sculpture should remain in the town plaza, which is no value at all.

[DanielJ1]

If Hector believed that artistic merit was a central consideration, then he would presumably need to assess the artistic merit of the sculpture in determining whether or not the sculpture should be removed (and presumably weigh this consideration against any other considerations). The fact that he does not (even though he admits that the sculpture may have artistic merit) indicates what value he places on artistic merit in deciding whether the sculpture should remain in the town plaza, which is no value at all.

Hi Jeff,

Thank you for the prompt response. I am still confused on how Hector neglecting to mention artistic merit as a factor for removing the artwork is equivalent to Hector excluding artistic merit as a central (e.g., most important) consideration. Hector seems to just be saying that public approval is a factor that determines whether the artwork is removed. I don't see an indication that Hector believes public approval/benefit to be the only factor. Thank you for your help!

-Daniel

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Daniel,

Remember the definition of the word "central" that I posted as "of the greatest importance; principal or essential."

If Hector considered artistic merit to be a central consideration, then he would need to factor it in to his analysis of whether the sculpture should be removed. That's what it means to be "of the greatest importance; principal or essential." You can't just ignore an essential consideration. The fact that he doesn't consider the artistic merit of the sculpture when deciding that it should be removed means that he does not consider it a central consideration. His ignoring of the artistic merit when deciding what should be done makes it not a central consideration for him.

Just to be clear, it is not simply that Hector doesn't mention artistic merit in his discussion, his conclusion ("if public opinion is what you say, then it certainly ought to be removed" ) clearly indicates that the artistic merit does not factor in this decision. In other words, if artistic merit were a central consideration for Hector, he would have made an exception of certain works of high artistic merit. Since he doesn't, artistic merit doesn't matter to Hector. If the public doesn't like the sculpture, it should be removed (no exceptions).

[DanielJ1]

Hi Jeff, that makes sense now, thank you for taking the time to explain!