#20 - According to a theory embraced by some contemporary

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[LustingFor!L]

Sentence 1:Theory embraced by some contemporary musicians, music is a series of sounds without meaning.
Sentence 2: These contemporary musicians preface their performances with explanations of their intentions.
Sentence 3: These contemporary musicians fail to confirm to their theory.

Sentence 3 is the conclusion. Since this is a justify question, I am looking for information that will force the conclusion to be true 100%. In an attempt to prephrase I tried to diagram this to figure out what link I needed. Came up with this:

Theory of some contemporary musicians: Music --> NO meaning
Some contemporary musicians preface music with explanation of intentions
Conclusion: Meaning --> NO Music

I had trouble removing answer choices as contenders, but when I got to E I saw it as NO meaning --> No preface. Links sentences 1 and 2 and forces conclusion to be true.

Is there a better way to go about this problem?

[Claire Horan]

Hi Lusting,

Here is how I would suggest looking for a prephrase:

Premise #1: Music --> NO meaning
Premise #2: These contemporary musicians preface their performances with explanations of their intentions.
Premise #3: (the answer choice that we want to prephrase)

Conclusion + Premise #1: contemporary musicians' music has meaning.

So then your prephrase needs to connect the presence of a preface to having meaning. That's what you see in answer choice (E).

I hope this helps!

[Lourdiana]

Hi - maybe I'm getting tripped up because answer choice E makes no sense to me. This is a Justify the Conclusion question correct? So the answer choice plus the premise must equal the conclusion? I don't see how choice E plus the premise (but these musicians ...explanations of their intentions") results to the conclusion of "thus, even their own music fails to conform to their theory." To me, the overall point of the argument is saying "whether or not musicians meanings has intentions, at the end of the day, its simply a serious of sounds bereft of meaning." I can't understand where E falls in line. I'm really struggling with this one and need some help if possible and suspect I'm confusing some stuff around Thanks in advance!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Lourdiana,

This was a really tricky stimulus!

Let's break down the stimulus: These musicians claim music is just a series of sounds, but these same musicians preface their performances with an explanation. Therefore, the author states, their music doesn't fit their theory.

When we try to prephrase this one, we can think about how we would know the music didn't fit the theory. We need to think explaining music with music having meaning or being more than a series of sounds. That's what answer choice (E) does for us. It says that musicians whose music does not have meaning (or is just a series of sounds) don't preface their performance with an explanation. That links the behavior of the musicians to the conclusion we can draw from that behavior.

Hope that helps!
Rachael

[Kra211]

This question really threw me through a loop, and I ended up just essentially guessing because none of the answers came anywhere near my prephrase and I was spending too much time analyzing it. I'm still struggling to understand the correct answer, so any help with breaking this down a little more would be appreciated.

1. According to a theory by some musicians, music is just sounds without meaning.
2. Same musicians give explanations of their intentions to audiences before a performance.
3. They contradict their own theory.

I prephrased something along the lines of "Because they contradict their own theory, music cannot be without meaning", or something along these lines. However the answer (E) is "musicians whose music has no meaning do not preface their performances with explanations of their intentions" and I had ruled this one out fairly quickly because it seemed to me an opposite answer and didn't seem anywhere near fulfilling the "answer choice + premise = conclusion" equation either. I feel like I'm must be just completely missing a big part of what's happening in this stimulus, but I'm having trouble figuring out what it is exactly.

Thank you for any help you can provide!

[KelseyWoods]

Hi Kra211!

Be careful here to make sure that you are focusing on the specific conclusion that we are trying to justify. The conclusion is the last sentence: "their own music fails to conform to their theory." We're simply trying to prove that the musicians contradict their own theory. We are not trying to prove whether or not their theory is correct. We're looking for an answer choice that we can add to the premises to prove that conclusion.

Your prephrase would not prove that conclusion. Your prephrase starts with "because they contradict their own theory...". But that's the conclusion we're trying to prove, it's not something that we are assuming to be true. All we need to prove that they contradict their own theory. We can't assume that they contradict their own theory in trying to prove that they contradict their own theory (that would be circular reasoning). And, again, we're not trying to prove that music cannot be without meaning. The specific wording of the conclusion is only about the musicians contradicting themselves. We do not need to prove that their theory is or is not correct.

Here's the equation we're trying to solve:

Some musicians claim music has no meaning
+
These same musicians preface their performances with explanations of their intentions
+
[Correct Answer]
=
These musicians contradict their theory that music has no meaning

Answer choice (E) tells us that "Musicians whose music has no meaning do not preface their performances with explanations of their intentions." If we fill that into our equation, it proves the conclusion:

Some musicians claim music has no meaning
+
These same musicians preface their performances with explanations of their intentions
+
Musicians whose music has no meaning do not preface their performances with explanations of their intentions
=
These musicians contradict their theory that music has no meaning

If musicians whose music has no meaning do not preface their performances with explanations of their intentions, and these musicians preface their music, then that proves that they are contradicting their theory that music has no meaning.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey