#14 - The arousal of anger is sometimes a legitimate

[Robert Carroll]

Tanaya,

That's not necessary - the premises already talk about "every legitimate artwork that has this aim." So both the premises and conclusion are already talking about legitimate art. No link is necessary between "legitimate artistic aim" and "legitimate artwork" to make the argument function.

Robert Carroll

[g_lawyered]

Hi P.S.,
This was a difficult question it took me a while to solve, but I didn't solve it as the explanations explained and want to know if I correctly answered the question for the correct reason. I saw few conditional reasoning language & translated only those statements (I didn't translate "most" and "some" statements). This is how I translated conditional reasoning I spotted:
Premise 2: Legitimate art Concrete intervention
contrapositive: NO Concrete Intervention NOT Legitimate art

Conclusion: NOT Legitimate art (critics are mistaken).
During my PT I wasn't able to translate the conclusion into conditional statement because "IS" isn't a necessary condition keyword. However, I did recognize "All" as a sufficient indicator so I translated as: NOT legitimate art.
So, I don't understand how we get to translate the conclusion as explained earlier?:

" ~(LA CB), "Concern for beauty is not a necessary condition for legitimate art.""

Can someone please explain this?

Question #2:
With my reasoning, I had answer choice D & E as contenders.
I translated answer choice E as: Legitimate art intervention. To me, this is a restatement of premise 2 (see my translation of premise 2 above) so I eliminated the answer because it isn't a statement that the argument assumes to prove the conclusion.

I translated D as: Art Intervention NO concern with beauty
I chose this answer choice because I noticed that "concrete intervention" was a rogue term that wasn't mentioned in the conclusion and thought it linked the argument. Is answer choice D correct for this reason? Also, did I translate D correctly?

Thanks in advance

[sabinarose99]

Can you diagram the conclusion as Concern for Beauty > ~All Art

[Adam Tyson]

I would not diagram the conclusion that way, sabinarose99, because the conclusion is not conditional. There is no "if...then" aspect to it. It's just "that's not always true; there are exceptions."

g_lawyered, your first conditional isn't quite accurate because the stimulus isn't saying that ALL legitimate art calls for concrete intervention. It's saying that all the legit art that calls for the arousal of anger must do that. And as I said above, the conclusion isn't conditional, so of course you had trouble diagramming it as if it was! Instead of diagramming, just focus on the author's negation of that claim. The author is saying that not all legitimate art is concerned with beauty, so to prove that you just need to show that there is at least one piece of legit art that is not concerned with beauty. Since we know some legit art calls for concrete intervention, answer D completes that link for us!

[quan-tang@hotmail.com]

'and every legitimate artwork that has this aim calls intentionally for concrete intervention in the world.'
It should be [*]LA CI instead of [*]AA CI

'Even granting that most art is concerned with beauty in some way'
It cannot be assumed 'most art' means 'most art with legitmate artistic aim', there could be arts without such aim.

The question is a mess, people who made it was wrong.

Hi, Ahhe,

Good question. Thank you for sharing your analysis. Let's diagram this question:

• AA = Arousal of Anger
  LA = Legitimate Artistic Aim
  CB = Concerned with Beauty
  CI = Concrete Intervention

1. AA LA
2. AA CI
3. LA CB
4. Conclusion: ~(LA CB), "Concern for beauty is not a necessary condition for legitimate art."

The conclusion could also be diagrammed thus:

• LA CB

To establish with certainty that there exists Legitimate Art that is not concerned with beauty using the premises, we must also find information about something else that is Legitimate Art. What do we know is Legitimate Art? We know some Arousal of Anger works are Legitimate Art. To prove that our conclusion is valid we would need to ensure that there is overlap between Legitimate Art that Arouses to Anger and works that are not Concerned with Beauty.

Let's start by noting what would not work. The following statement is insufficient: Some work that Arouses to Anger is not Concerned with Beauty (AA CB). This statement does not work because we cannot make connections through these "some" statements. AA CB LA does not imply *AA LA*.

We need a stronger statement to guarantee overlap. What would work? If we knew every Arousal of Anger work is not Concerned with Beauty, then we would have sufficient information to prove the conclusion.

• AA CB

Now we can make our connection:

• LA AA CB
  LA CB

"The Legitimate Art that Arouses to Anger is not Concerned with Beauty."

Now we have a valid conclusion.

I hope this helps!

[Jeff Wren]

Hi Quan,

This question is definitely tricky and gave many test takers trouble, but the logic is actually valid.

One thing that may not be clear is that this question involves Formal Logic. We discuss Formal Logic in our course in the lesson 8 Homework online and in chapter 13 of the LR Bible. Formal Logic expands on conditional reasoning by including "some" statements and "most" statements as well as the "all" and "none" statements that get covered in conditional reasoning.

Formal Logic doesn't show up on the LSAT as much as it used to in the past, but it does appear from time to time, and I encourage students to study it if they have the time just to be safe.

I'd diagram the first premise as:

LA some CIW (which reads some legitimate artwork calls for intervention in the world)

The statement about most art being concerned with beauty is unnecessary for the argument and so I wouldn't diagram it. It's basically a red herring and is included here to confuse test takers.

The conclusion is tricky, but basically means "some legitimate artwork are not concerned with beauty," which I'd diagram:

LE some Not CB

Answer D, which can be diagrammed in several ways, but one way it can diagrammed that is helpful to link to our premise is:

CIW -> Not CB

Linking this answer to our premise, we get:

LA some CIW -> Not CB

which allows us to infer the conclusion:

LE some Not CB

If you're not familiar with Formal Logic, I'd recommend reading up on it first, as these concepts and inferences will make a lot more sense.

[wdrosenfeld@yahoo.com]

I took this question stem to be looking for a necessary assumption but the correct answer choice gives a sufficient assumption, is it always the case that when doing an NA problem that a SA answer choice is correct?

[Adam Tyson]

The question stem here uses the phrase "if which one of the following is assumed," and that means that we are NOT looking for a necessary assumption, wdrosenfeld. Necessary Assumptions (which we just call Assumptions) won't be introduced by the language of Sufficient Conditions, like "if." Also, the use of the phrase "The conclusion of the argument follows logically" indicates that we are looking for something that will prove the conclusion - a Sufficient Assumption (which we call Justify the Conclusion) - rather than something that the argument requires.

For some questions, the correct answer may be both Necessary and Sufficient, but it's important to be able to tell the differences in the question stems. In most cases, the Necessary Assumption will be fairly weak, and won't prove the conclusion, while most Justify the Conclusion correct answers will be very strong and will not be things that the author must have assumed.

Short answer: "if assumed" means you are NOT looking for an assumption, and you should accept every answer as a true statement.