#11 - Critic: In her presentation of important works of art

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Must Be True. The correct answer choice is (D).

In this Most Strongly Supported question (a variant of Must Be True in which the correct answer doesn't absolutely have to be true, but which is nonetheless a reasonable inference based on the facts given in the stimulus, while none of the other answers is supported or, if they are, only very slightly) we are told that Waverly has claimed that she tried to remain objective in her presentations, but despite that goal she wrote in a way that, to the author of the passage, clearly indicated her feelings about the art. The critic also shares their opinion that such attempts at objectivity never really work. You could interpret that as just an opinion, or even as a conclusion made by the critic based on what happened with Waverly. For the purposes of this question, it doesn't matter if you see it as an argument or not, as all we need to do is draw some new inference based on these claims being true.

A good prephrase here might be that Waverly didn't do what she says she tried to do. We can't know if she made a sincere effort or if she intended to be biased and was lying about her intentions. All we can know is that she didn't end up writing as objectively as she said she wanted to.

Answer choice (A): We cannot infer anything about what Waverly actually believes; we know only what she said and what she did, and that they don't match.

Answer choice (B): We don't know what art was in the book, other than that she liked some of it and was disinterested in some of it. There's no information about how strong her opinions were, and whether she had strong opinions about everything. In fact, one could say that "disinterested" is the opposite of a strong opinion, and that this answer must be false.

Answer choice (C): As mentioned above, we cannot infer anything about Waverly's intention, only about her results. Never mix those two up! We often get results that are contrary to our intentions, after all.

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice. This is the best answer of the bunch, and is therefore the one most strongly supported. It would be better, and would rise to the level of a full-strength Must Be True answer, if it said she did not succeed in her "stated" intentions, but there is at least some support for this answer if we assume that Waverly's intentions were what she claimed them to be. At any rate, this answer has to be considered at least a contender as you move on to answer E.

Answer choice (E): There is no way to know what Waverly believes, only what she said and what she did. This answer has no support, and is therefore a loser.

While we may not love answer D, because we cannot be certain about Waverly's intentions, it is nevertheless the best answer, and that's what the instructions in Logical Reasoning tell us to select! Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, as the saying goes.

[emilysnoddon]

Hello,

is D correct because the stimulus says that a pretense of objectivity never succeeds? Thus, if that statement is true then Waverly could not possibly succeed in her intended objectivity about works of art.

I wasnt sure about this one.

Let me know - thanks!

[Clay Cooper]

Hi Emily,

Thanks for your question.

That is correct. Answer choice D is correct because we are told that no pretense of objectivity ever succeeds in writing about art.

Furthermore, the other answer choices are all way off base - there is nothing about Waverly's beliefs (A and E) mentioned in the stimulus, and the only intention (C) she acknowledges is to stay objective. Finally, we are not told if she included art about which she feels strongly or not (B).

Hope that helps.

[acp25]

Hello,

First of all, this is a Must be True question, right? But at a lesser degree and does not require to pass the Fact Test because of "most strongly support."

I know that answer D is correct, but I do not understand how this is the case. I chose A. Please bear with me as I explain my thought process for each answer choices A and D.

A) I chose A because I thought the quotation ("I have sought neither to advocate nor to denigrate what I included"), was Waverly's belief. I understood the quote as: Waverly believes that there Waverly should not have any preference to any type of art, which is written as answer choice A.

D) I striked choice D because I simply thought it was not included in the stimulus: no mention of whether or not Waverly succeeded.

As I typed the above, I realized that I missed the part in the stimulus about Waverly's objective and mistaken it for her beliefs. But then I also think that objectives and beliefs are a little identical to each other. Why would something be an objective if you do not believe in it?

Someone please share their thoughts. I hope my thought process made sense here. Thank you in advance.

[James Finch]

Hi ACP,

This is a Most Strongly Supported question, which is similar to Must be True but with the caveat that it doesn't have to always be 100% certain, while a MBT does. But yes, they function largely the same and both require support from the stimulus. they're also both common question types in Reading Comprehension.

The big issue with (A) is that it misrepresents the idea of objectivity, in that one can make objective descriptions that only include what is present with no opinion expressed, as Waverly claims to have done in the book, and still have private, subjective preferences (although the critic may disagree with this, believing writing about art requires subjective opinion, we don't know Waverly's opinion on it one way or the other)

(D) is much more clearly correct as we are given a conditional relationship by the critic--"a pretense of objectivity never succeeds"--and from that can infer that Waverly's pretense of objectivity must have failed as well.

Hope this clears things up!