#16 - A popular complaint about abstract expressionist

[mab9178]

Thank you Adam for clarifying that the negation of "few" is "many."

If E had said "some" instead of "few," would E then have been a supporter necessary assumption as opposed to a defender, like B because B is correcting for the flaw whereas E (with some) would have been just closing a gap?

I had B selected, and was about to move to question 17, but out of abundance of caution (or so I thought) I ran the negation test on "E" BECAUSE "similarities" is the predicate to the "complaint" in the first premise.

For whatever reason, I thought "few" on the LSAT is synonymous to "some," so I negated "few" with "none," and just like that I was stopped in my tracks; and lost precious seconds.

Thank You
Mazen

[lsatquestions]

I still don't really understand why MOST of the preschoolers paintings have to not be displeasing. What if every preschooler painting was aesthetically displeasing, but just under the threshold above which a painting would be considered aesthetically pleasing? That allows most preschooler paintings to be displeasing while most abstract expressionist paintings to be aesthetically pleasing, since they were consistently chosen.

[Adam Tyson]

Mazen - if answer E had said "some" then it would, I think, have been a necessary assumption, because the negation - there were no similarities - would hurt the argument. After all, the argument is about comparing paintings that have stylistic similarities, with the difference being the artist rather than the style.

lsatquestions - that's doing a lot of work to undermine that otherwise good answer! You have to imagine that there is some hypothetical line, like a number line, where you could clearly say "this thing is displeasing, but this other thing is just a tiny bit better and therefore must be pleasing." And you would have to assume that every child's painting in the study was right on that point.

Instead of all that hard work to try and argue against that answer, how about just using the Negation Technique? What if most of the children's paintings WERE displeasing? Then the fact that the abstract expressionists' paintings were better doesn't support the claim that they were good. It's not that they must be bad, but that we no longer have any reason to believe they are good, because "better than something that is bad" isn't a very convincing argument for something being good. The negation of the correct answer doesn't need to disprove the conclusion; it just needs to undermine the reasoning that led to that conclusion.

[shakinotstirred]

What would the negation test be on D here?

It was my choice with all others as cross-outs, clearly I made two mistakes here.
I thought that D would make one of the premises in the argument fall apart- it refutes "that most participants in the study were consistently rating the abstract expressionist painting as aesthetically better.."

[EmilyOwens]

What would the negation test be on D here?

It was my choice with all others as cross-outs, clearly I made two mistakes here.
I thought that D would make one of the premises in the argument fall apart- it refutes "that most participants in the study were consistently rating the abstract expressionist painting as aesthetically better.."

Hi shakin,

Answer choice (D) does not refute the fact that most participants consistently rated the abstract expressionist painting as aesthetically better. Rather, it says that even those who weren’t rating those paintings as better consistently (i.e. even those in the “some” group, not the “most” group) were still rating them better more often than the young children’s paintings. However, we don’t need to assume this in order to make the argument make sense.

We can also negate this statement if we want, as you requested. It basically says:

If not rating abstract expressionist paintings as aesthetically better consistently, then still rating better more than not.

Negated, this is:

If not rating abstract expressionist paintings better more than not, then you’re rating abstract expressionist paintings as aesthetically better consistently.

This in no way attacks the argument, which is what we want when utilizing the Assumption Negation Technique.

I hope that helps!

[HarmonRabb]

I'm having trouble following James' answer. I see the switch from "pleasing" to "better" in the stimulus but the correct answer then reverts to "(dis)pleasing". How does the professional artist's work being "aesthetically better"than the children's relate to the children's work being not "aesthetically displeasing" ?

[Dana D]

Hey Harmon,

Both the professional painters and preschoolers works might both be terrible, with the pros paintings being less terrible. If this were true, we could say the professional paintings are more aesthetically pleasing than the preschoolers, but that doesn't mean we are saying that the abstract paintings are actually aesthetically pleasing in general. As James pointed out, these types of comparisons are relative only.

Think of it in terms of height. The pros might all be taller than the preschoolers, therefore we are saying the professionals are all taller than the preschoolers, but we can't say that all the professional painters are categorically tall based off that comparison alone - maybe compared to most other adults, they are short. Or, in this case, maybe their art is more aesthetically pleasing than that of preschoolers, but compared to all the other art out there, it's still not aesthetically pleasing. That is, unless, we know that the preschoolers' work was already not aesthetically displeasing (meaning it is aesthetically pleasing). If we already say the preschooler's work passed this threshold of being aesthetically pleasing, and the professional's work is better than that, then we can say the professional's work is aesthetically pleasing. To go back to our height comparison, if we say that all the preschoolers were not untall (they were tall) and the professionals were taller than the preschoolers, then we can definitively say the professionals were tall.

Hope that helps!

[HarmonRabb]

It makes sense now, thanks very much.

[benndur]

"the preschoolers' work was already not aesthetically displeasing (meaning it is aesthetically pleasing). "

I don't see why this has to be true? Just because it is not displeasing does not automatically mean it is pleasing. I think that's a false dichotomy.

What if this just meant that most of the pre-schoolers art was simply OK -- not bad enough to be displeasing but not good enough to be pleasing either? I think that's a completely reasonable hypothesis.

The whole idea of the argument depending on answer B) is that if all of the pre-schooler paintings displeasing, then being better than that doesn't prove they are aesthetically pleasing; while they could be pleasing, they could also still be displeasing (less so than the PS paintings), or just neutral.

In the same vein, just because something is not displeasing, it doesn't prove that it is pleasing. If most of the PS paintings are simply neutral, then better could still mean neutral.

I did read the comment about trying to eliminate a good answer, and B) is still obviously the best answer, but I had doubts based on the fact that the stimulus said the argument depends on assuming one of these and yet it can still be false even if B) is true. If it were instead, "which one if true most helps" or similar, it would be have been completely fine. But this discrepancy made me question whether or not this was really the best answer.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi benndur,

You're correct that "not aesthetically displeasing" is not identical in meaning to "aesthetically pleasing" in that the former does allow the possibility of aesthetically neutral.

In this case though, Answer B is necessary for the argument even though it does not justify it.

You wrote:

"but I had doubts based on the fact that the stimulus said the argument depends on assuming one of these and yet it can still be false even if B) is true.'

Based on this comment, it sounds like you may be a bit unclear on exactly how necessary assumptions work. A necessary assumption means that if the argument is true, then the assumption must be true (not the other way around). It is perfectly possible and often happens where in reality the assumption is true even though the argument is not.

For example, if I make the claim that "My friend John is a great tennis player," one assumption that is necessary for that claim is that "John can hit the ball over the net." Of course, it is entirely possible that the assumption is true even though the claim is not, but it is not possible for the claim to be true without the assumption also being true. In other words, John can't be a great tennis player if he cannot hit the ball over the net.