Logical Reasoning

PT115 · S4 · Q16 Cézanne’s art inspired the next

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Cézanne’s art inspired the next generation of artists, twentieth-century modernist creators of abstract art.

Information

Causal (X inspired Y)

Cezanne's art inspired the following generation (20th century modernist creators of abstract art)

Quantifiers (most / small few)

Most experts say Cezanne's is an early modernist.

Small few say he's not an early modernist (we just see his work from a modern point of view).

Evaluate

Okay ... our goal on Inference questions is to find facts that can be combined in order to derive some other truth. But 2/3 of the claims in this paragraph are opinions.

The first sentence makes it sound like there's reason to believe the "most experts". Since Cezanne inspired modernist creators of abstract art, it seems pretty reasonable to call him an early modernist.

But we certainly couldn't say that in any Must Be True sense.

Goal

This stimulus isn't lending itself to predicting an answer, so we'll just see what's offered and look for mild, provable language we can support with the small amount we know.

16.

Which one of the following statements is most strongly supported by the information above?

  1. Cézanne’s work is highly controversial.

    Too Strong: highly controversial

    The fact that most experts would call him an early modernist while a small few would reject that idea isn't strong support for the changed term, "highly controversial". It could be that out of 1000 experts, 995 agree he was an early modernist and 5 reject that. We wouldn't call that highly controversial.

    5% picked this

  2. Cézanne was an early creator

    Out of Scope

    Out of Scope: abstract art by Cezanne We know that Cezanne's work inspired modernist creators of abstract art, but that doesn't prove that Cezanne created any abstract art. And even if he did, we'd have no license for saying he was an early creator of abstract art.

    11% picked this

  3. Correct

    Cézanne’s work helped to develop

    Why this is right

    This is supported by the first sentence. It's unusual for the correct answer to receive support from only one claim, but since these claims didn't really fit together in any way, it's not shocking to see it with this stimulus. The first sentence said that "Cezanne's work inspired 20th century modernist creators of abstract art." If his work inspired modernists, can we say that his work helped to develop modernism? Sure, I guess. Modernists definitely developed modernism, and if his work inspired them, then we can say he somewhat helped to develop modernism.

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

    61% picked this

  4. Modern art owes less to

    Unsupported: siding with the small few

    This answer is accepting the opinion of the "small few" as the correct one, but we have no way to support that they are more likely correct than are the majority of experts. Nothing in the passage really ever talks about "how much modern art owes" in the first place. We only debate whether to rank him as an early modernist or not.

    7% picked this

  5. Cézanne’s work tends to be

    Unsupported: siding with the small few

    This answer is accepting the opinion of the "small few" as the correct one, but we have no way to support that they are more likely correct than are the majority of experts. Maybe it is correct to interpret Cezanne's work as modernist, as most experts do.

    15% picked this

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