Logical Reasoning

PT124 · S1 · Q2 Elaine: The purpose of art

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Elaine: The purpose of art museums is to preserve artworks and make them available to the public.

Elaine

The purpose of art museums is preserving art so that it’s available for the public. So they should try to get and display the best examples of art from each era / style, whether or not experts would call it a masterpiece.

Fred

They should try to acquire the masterpieces, so that they can preserve best art.

Evaluation

The disagreement hinges around how art museums should invest their money: should the goal be getting great exemplars from each era / style, but not worrying about whether they’re masterpieces? Or should it be the opposite, where you worry about getting as many masterpieces as possible.

Goal

Whether museums should primarily care about getting masterpieces or care about getting examples from every period and genre.

2.

Elaine's and Frederick's statements provide the most support for the claim that they would disagree about whether

  1. many artistic masterpieces are not

    Out Of Scope

    Out Of Scope: “masterpieces not recognized as masterpieces” Neither person says anything about pieces of art that rightly should be considered masterpieces but haven’t been by experts.

    11% picked this

  2. Correct

    museums should seek to represent

    Why this is right

    Elaine says yes to this, while Fred says, “No, they have limited resources and instead should seek to maximize their number of masterpieces”.

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

    72% picked this

  3. art museums should seek to

    Agree

    They would agree on this claim. They both think that museums should be preserving certain types of work.

    3% picked this

  4. an art museum ought to

    Trap

    Both Disagree Out Of Scope: “prohibitively expensive” Neither person discusses such a specific hypothetical. Since Elaine wants the best examples, not necessarily an unusual example, she would probably disagree. And Fred would disagree because he wants museums to pursue masterpieces.

    6% picked this

  5. all of the artworks that

    Too Strong: “all”

    We wouldn’t be able to infer that either person agrees to this incredibly strong claim. Also, neither person is talking about this issue that A and E mention, of whether there are works that are masterpieces but aren’t recognized as such, or works that are recognized as such but aren’t masterpieces.

    7% picked this

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