Logical Reasoning

PT104 · S1 · Q24 Folklorist: Oral traditions are

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Folklorist: Oral traditions are often preferable to written ones.

Conclusion

Oral traditions are preferable to written one.

Evidence

Oral traditions (which require exclusive dependence on speech) improve the memory, whereas literate populations (which presumably have written histories) end up with sluggish recall because they can just run to written sources as needed.

Also, writing has no limits (presumably memory / oral traditions do have limits), so it can become so abundant that both writer and reader become confused.

Meanwhile, oral traditions don't suffer from the same accumulation of excess material, because whatever's useless / irrelevant is quickly eradicated.

Evaluate

We ascertain that the first sentence is the Main Conclusion because of the opinion indicator "preferable", combined with the fact that the author proceeds to support that opinion with the rest of the paragraph.

There are two main advantages offered in the evidence for why oral history is better than written history:

1. Oral is better for the memory 2. Oral is less likely to lead to an overabundance of material (which can confuse the audience and the speaker)

Goal

Since there are two premises, either one might be involved in how the correct answer strengthens. We can pre-phrase what each of those sounds like

1. Whichever tradition is better at improving / maintaining memory is preferable.

or

2. Whichever tradition is better at pruning away useless, excessive material so that the speaker/reader are clearer on what remains is preferable.

24.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the folklorist's argumentation?

  1. Accuracy in communication breeds mental

    Bad Conclusion Match Weak Evidence Match

    There isn't any language in here that allows us to say, "Thus, X is a preferable tradition to Y". Neither of the premises dealt directly with accuracy. We could probably say that in virtue of oral tradition's providing us with sharper memories and less clutter, it leads to more accurate communication. Following this answer choice, that would lead to more mental self-reliance. But is "more self-reliance" the causal difference-maker that allows us to pick the more preferable tradition? There just isn't enough "1/2 premise, 1/2 conclusion" language matching here.

    16% picked this

  2. Literate populations need to make

    Unrelated to Goal

    This answer doesn't sound like it provides a positive or a negative. It just asserts a need that a certain population has (it's also presumably a need that illiterate, oral populations would also have, to make this answer even less impactful). We need a rule that takes what we know about the differences between Oral vs. Written traditions and deems the former the more preferable one.

    8% picked this

  3. Tradition is of greater value

    Bad Premise Match

    With "greater value", we finally have answer choice language that could help us argue that one tradition is preferable to another. But in order to use this to judge the Oral vs. Written head-to-head, we've have to be thinking, Oral traditions = tradition Written traditions = accumulation of knowledge But that doesn't make any sense. First of all, both oral traditions and written traditions are traditions. Secondly, "accumulation of knowledge" doesn't even match anything we read about. The proliferation of writing certainly doesn't mean the same thing as the accumulation of knowledge.

    7% picked this

  4. Correct

    Economy of expression is to

    Why this is right

    This answer has the clearest connection to our conclusion language, preferred = preferable. When we're doing Strengthen + Principle, our biggest shortcut is to only consider answers (at least initially) that give us wording that match up with our conclusion. In order to use this rule to weigh in on the Oral vs. Written head-to-head, we need to think Oral traditions = economy of expression Written traditions = verbosity This is what the 2nd advantage of oral traditions was getting at. Oral traditions trim the fluff -- they eradicate the useless and irrelevant. While reading the paragraph, I interpreted these last two sentences to mean that in literate societies, there is so much writing that you fill up libraries and the reader doesn't know what to read / what to believe / whom to trust. Meanwhile, in oral societies, they can only remember their top 100 stories / tales / instructional metaphors... so it's sort of a survival of the fittest ideas. But what this answer choice makes me think LSAC was really intending with the last two sentences is this: - Writing has no limits, so I can keep adding clauses and semicolons and modifiers and such until I have such a long, dense, poorly written sentence that the writer and reader are confused on the ultimate meaning of that sentence. (verbosity) - Oral traditions would make it really hard to remember a super long, complicated sentence. The useless or irrelevant parts of the sentence are eradicated, so the crucial core meaning can be remembered. (economy of expression)

    Skill tested: Principle-Strengthen · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

    56% picked this

  5. Ideas that cannot be discussed

    Unrelated to Goal

    We need a rule that takes what we've been told about Oral vs. Written traditions and allows to argue that Oral traditions are preferable. Neither one of those traditions was described as containing "ideas that cannot be discussed clearly". And even if they had been, this rule would still just be saying that within either type of tradition, we shouldn't discuss anything that can't be discussed clearly. It doesn't give us a mechanism for arguing that one type of tradition is preferable to the other.

    12% picked this

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