Logical Reasoning

PT118 · S4 · Q17 Art critic: Criticism focuses on

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Art critic: Criticism focuses on two issues: first, whether the value of an artwork is intrinsic to the work; and second, whether judgments about an artwork’s quality are objective rather than merely matters of taste.

Conclusion

The issue of whether the value of an artwork is intrinsic to the work is related to the issue of whether judgments about a work's quality are objective or matters of taste.

Evidence (for) + Intermediate Conclusion (thus)

If an artwork's value is not intrinsic, then it must be extrinsic (in which case judgments about the quality of the work can only be a matter of taste.)

Evaluate

This is a pretty brutal argument to understand on a first read. The main conclusion is only claiming that "whether value is intrinsic vs. extrinsic" is related to whether .

She establishes a binary we probably already assumed: If it's not intrinsic, then it must be extrinsic

But then she goes from "extrinsic" via the Conclusion indicator thus to the idea that "judgments about quality would be based on taste".

This seems to be the reasoning move where the author is making a big assumption. The question stem asks what the argument "takes for granted", so we're being asked for a Necessary Assumption.

Goal

The author thinks that this chain exists:

not intrinsic → extrinsic → judgments about quality are just a matter of taste

The link between 1 and 2 is provided to us by the conditional .

But the link between 2 and 3 is just assumed as the author moves from "extrinsic" to "quality judgments are only a matter of taste" via a conclusion indicator. Let's look for that missing link.

17.

The art critic's reasoning is most vulnerable to the criticism that it takes for granted that

  1. judgments about the quality of

    Too Strong: always

    The argument doesn't imply that quality judgments are always a matter of taste, only that "if the value of an artwork is extrinsic, then quality judgments are always a matter of taste". If the value of an artwork is intrinsic, it's possible that the author would think that quality judgments would be objective.

    8% picked this

  2. people sometimes agree about judgments

    Out of Scope: agree

    Even though this is appealingly weak wording, nothing in the argument had anything to do with whether or not people agree about judgments that are matters of taste. If we negated this and said, "People never agree about judgments that are only matters of taste", it wouldn't weaken the argument at all, because the author was never concerned with whether people do / don't agree.

    4% picked this

  3. Correct

    judgments about extrinsic value cannot

    Why this is right

    This provides a conditional answer, so we should think about or look at how it's diagrammed and ask ourselves whether it would match up with a reasoning move the author made: Extrinsic value ? Judgments not objective That matches up with the missing link we were predicting, "If extrinsic, then judgments are just a matter of taste". The author is treating "judgments are a matter of taste" and "judgments are objective" as mutually exclusive. So if the author thinks that judgments are just a matter of taste, this is equivalent to saying that judgments are not objective.

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

    75% picked this

  4. judgments about intrinsic value are

    Too Strong: always Illegal Negation

    The author doesn't need to assume the extreme idea that all judgments about intrinsic value are objective. This answer is an illegal negation of the missing link. We were looking for: if value is ? then judgments are extrinsic just matter of taste This answer is saying: if value is ? then judgments are not extrinsic not just matter of taste But this answer disguised the illegal negation it was doing by re-writing "not extrinsic" as "intrinsic", and writing "not a matter of taste" with "objective".

    8% picked this

  5. an artwork’s value is sometimes

    Not Necessary

    This is appealingly weak wording, but it's not a necessary idea. If we negate this, it will say "an artwork's value is never intrinsic to it". That means that an artwork's value is always extrinsic, which means that judgments about quality are only a matter of taste, which means that "the issue of whether value is intrinsic / extrinsic is related to the issue of whether judgments are objective / matters of taste." In other words, negating this answer wouldn't weaken. In fact, the negation seems more like a strengthener.

    4% picked this

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