Logical Reasoning

PT122 · S4 · Q10 To be great, an artwork must

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To be great, an artwork must express a deep emotion, such as sorrow or love.

Statements

Both of these sentences give us conditional rules.

The first sentence uses the structure "to be X, you must be Y", which could be rephrased as "X requires Y". The verb requires is the same as the conditional arrow.

The sentence uses the form "X can't do something that is Y", which we could rephrase as .

1st: Great artwork → express deep emotion

2nd: Artist can't experience → Artwork can't express emotion X emotion X

Evaluate

When we get multiple conditionals, we're asking ourselves if they chain together in some way. We may need to contrapose them in order to see the chain. We can also just look to see if they have an Overlapping Idea.

In this case, both conditionals are talking about whether or not an artwork can express a certain emotion. If we contrapose the 1st sentence we get this:

artwork doesn't → artwork can't express deep emotion be great

We could potentially chain this onto the end of the second sentence's rule, if we adapt that rule to be speaking specifically about deep emotions.

Artist can't artwork can't artwork experience → express a → can't be deep emotion deep emotion great

The contrapositive of this chain would sound like .

Goal

Since we're usually rewarded for putting chains together, the correct answer will probably play off the idea that or the contrapositive idea that .

10.

Which one of the following can be properly inferred from the statements above?

  1. A computer can create an

    Capable of vs. Actually experienced

    Yikes, this one is hard! This looks like a legit application of the rule in the 2nd sentence, which says creator incapable of ? artwork can't express experiencing emotion X emotion X However, to be correct this answer should have ended "... only if it has the capacity to experience such an emotion". The rule isn't based on whether the artwork's creator has actually experienced that emotion, just whether they are capable of experiencing it. Inference questions frequently put a really tempting answer in spot (A), so force yourself to read all five before deciding on it (or make a habit of reading from the bottom up) on Inference.

    11% picked this

  2. The greatest art is produced

    Relative vs. Absolute: great vs. greatest

    The information only allows us to talk about "great" in a binary, absolute on/off way. We don't have any language that allows to say one thing is more / less great than another.

    6% picked this

  3. An artwork that expresses a

    Opposite Logic

    We know this: artwork doesn't express ? not a great deep emotion artwork This answer is saying this: artwork does express ? is a great deep emotion artwork

    14% picked this

  4. Correct

    As long as computers are

    Why this is right

    This answer is what we were expecting. Since the two conditional rules had an overlapping idea, we chained them together and derived this connection: Artist can't artwork can't artwork experience ? express a ? can't be deep emotion deep emotion great If a computer is incapable of experiencing deep emotions, then we know the artworks that computer creates will not express deep emotions, which means they will always fail to qualify as great artworks.

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

    66% picked this

  5. Only artworks that succeed in

    Artwork vs. Artist

    The first sentence gives us this rule Great artwork ? Expresses deep emotion This answer choice gives us this rule Made by Great Art ? Expresses deep emotion It's pretty close. It has the same logical flow of "great requires expressing deep", but the first sentence is listing a requirement of great artworks, this answer is listing a requirement of "artwork by great artists". We might hear how off this answer choice is from anything we were so far told by rephrasing it this way: every product a great artist makes is an artwork that expresses deep emotions We definitely weren't told anything that is true of 100% of the products of a great artist. We actually weren't told anything about great artists.

    2% picked this

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