#16 - In determining the authenticity of a painting, connoisseurs claim to be guided by

[ashpine17]

I found Answer Choice B confusing. The conclusion was that a connoisseur's assessment wasn't credible because people have all sorts of emotional responses to paintings (premise). And I get why the argument is flawed because there could still be set standards in determining a painting's authenticity even if emotional responses vary widely. But I don't quite understand what B is trying to say. That single painter is referring to Rembrandt and doesn't it serve as a premise to the conclusion? So is Answer Choice B describing a flaw at all or something that happened in the passage or neither?

[Poonam Agrawal]

Hi Ash!

There's two things to address from your question - 1) what the flaw is, and 2) why answer choice (B) is incorrect.

The main flaw in this argument is that the conclusion is about connoisseurs' ability to give valid assessments, whereas the premise talks about person-to-person (the general public). The argument leaves open the possibility that connoisseurs have similar thoughts about emotional impact as one another, and can, in fact, give assessments that do not vary widely per painting. We would be able to give credence to such an assessment because most, if not all, connoisseurs would agree on if a painting is authentic or not. This is why answer choice (C) is the correct answer.

Answer choice (B), on the other hand, claims that the flaw is that the argument is based on the example of only Rembrandt's works and the conclusion is about paintings in general. We have to be careful here: the conclusion is not about paintings in general. It is about the credence we can give to connoisseurs' assessments. The example of Rembrandt's works is fine to use in this stimulus because it just illustrates the idea of using emotional impact to guide the authenticity of a painting. Hope this helps!

[ashpine17]

Hi Ash!

There's two things to address from your question - 1) what the flaw is, and 2) why answer choice (B) is incorrect.

The main flaw in this argument is that the conclusion is about connoisseurs' ability to give valid assessments, whereas the premise talks about person-to-person (the general public). The argument leaves open the possibility that connoisseurs have similar thoughts about emotional impact as one another, and can, in fact, give assessments that do not vary widely per painting. We would be able to give credence to such an assessment because most, if not all, connoisseurs would agree on if a painting is authentic or not. This is why answer choice (C) is the correct answer.

Answer choice (B), on the other hand, claims that the flaw is that the argument is based on the example of only Rembrandt's works and the conclusion is about paintings in general. We have to be careful here: the conclusion is not about paintings in general. It is about the credence we can give to connoisseurs' assessments. The example of Rembrandt's works is fine to use in this stimulus because it just illustrates the idea of using emotional impact to guide the authenticity of a painting. Hope this helps!

Why does the author of the stimulus think that people in general having widely varying opinions about emotional impact in paintings would undermine connoisseurs' credibility? Is he assuming they won't be able to come to an agreement as to what makes a painting authentic because of this variation?

[Robert Carroll]

ashpine,

That's the exact problem with the stimulus - the author thinks that because there is wide interpersonal variation in emotional impact, this variation will also be reflected among connoisseurs. Look at the sentence right before the conclusion: the author is claiming "there's a big range of different emotional impacts on different people." Conclusion: "Connoisseurs will also experience a great range of emotional impacts, so we can't rely on the consistency of these impacts to authenticate paintings."

Imagine emotional impact comes in four flavors: Pity, Indignation, Sublimity, Joy. The author's penultimate sentence seems to indicate that, if we took 1,000 people, we'd likely find the following:

250 people said that the primary emotional impact the painting had on them was one of Pity
250 people said that the primary emotional impact the painting had on them was one of Indignation
250 people said that the primary emotional impact the painting had on them was one of Sublimity
250 people said that the primary emotional impact the painting had on them was one of Joy

The author concludes that, if a connoisseur judges that a painting must be an authentic Rembrandt if it evokes Pity, but not authentic if it does something else, then the diversity of opinions mentioned above casts doubt on this way of judging authenticity.

The problem is, it's certainly possible that, though, as in my example above, people in general might differ in the emotional impacts they feel, maybe connoisseurs are consistent with each other in their responses. So, although a "person on the street" might have a 25% chance of feeling any particular emotion because of a Rembrandt, maybe connoisseurs ALL feel Pity - then the emotional impact IS a good way for connoisseurs to judge paintings' authenticity.

Robert Carroll