Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Easy

PT142 S2 Q5 Explanation

Vandenburg: This art museum

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

TopicsPrinciple-Strengthen

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Stimulus

Vandenburg: This art museum is not adhering to its purpose. Its founders intended it to devote as much attention to contemporary art as to the art of earlier periods, but its smaller than its other collections.

Simpson: The relatively small size of the museum's contemporary collection is appropriate. It's an art museum, not an ethnographic museum designed to collect every style of every period. Its contemporary art collection is there is little high-quality contemporary art.

What this question is testing

Principle-Strengthen

Your task

Break the argument into its conclusion and evidence, then do exactly what the question stem asks with that structure.

Common trap

Answers that sound relevant to the topic but don't connect to the argument's actual reasoning.

Winning move

Predict what a right answer must do, then test each choice against the conclusion-evidence gap.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
5.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the reasoning in Simpson's

Answer choices

  1. Correct82% picked this

    An art museum should collect only works that its curators consider to be of

    Why this is right

    This justifies the curators’ belief about what is an appropriate amount of contemporary art.

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

  2. Weaken1% picked this

    An art museum should not collect any works that violate the purpose defined by

    This might weaken the argument if it could be established that what the museum’s founders defined as the museum’s purpose and what the curators see as the museum’s purpose are at odds.

  3. Too Weak13% picked this

    An art museum's purpose need not be to collect every style

    This is too weak to justify the reasoning because this does not necessarily apply to this art museum. Furthermore, this does not go far enough to support the curators’ decision to limit the quantity of contemporary art.

  4. Out of Scope1% picked this

    An ethnographic museum's purpose should be defined according to its

    This museum is not an ethnographic museum.

  5. Weaken2% picked this

    The intentions of an art museum's curators should not determine what is collected

    This undermines the argument by challenging the museum curators’ decisions.

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