Logical Reasoning

PT148 · S4 · Q21 Critic: To be a literary classic

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Critic: To be a literary classic a book must reveal something significant about the human condition.

Statements

conditionals (must, nothing)

Literary → Reveal something significant classic about the human condition

Unworthy of → Doesn't reveal anything serious study significant about human condition

Evaluate

Our goal in Inference questions is to try to combine 2 or more claims in order to derive some other thought. Here, there are only 2 claims, so we know which two to focus on.

We otherwise use Overlapping Concepts as a signal about which claims we should try synthesizing. Here, both claims involve the concept of whether or not something "reveals anything significant about the human condition".

On Must Be True, the most common pattern is to see conditional logic and need to chain it together with other conditional statements, or to have a conditional rule that we can apply to some provided fact.

Here, both claims are conditional and they have an overlapping ingredient, so it's very likely they chain together. We use the conditional logic indicator words to help ourselves diagram the rules correctly.

"Must" = introduces the right side of the arrow. "Must" indicates necessity, and the right side is called the necessary condition.

"Nothing that is A is B" = "No A's are B" = "All A's are ~B"

Goal

In order to chain these together we need to contrapose either rule. We end up with this chain.

Literary → Reveals something → worthy classic significant serious study

Unworthy → Not reveal → Not literary serious study significant classic

The correct answer will likely connect the 1st to the 3rd idea. At least one incorrect answer will probably offer us an illegal reversal or negation of these relationships.

21.

If the critic's statements are true, which one of the following must also be true?

  1. Any book worthy of serious

    Reversed Logic

    This answer offers an illegal reversal. This is what we know. Literary ? Reveals something ? worthy classic significant serious study This is what the answer is saying: worthy ? Literary serious study classic

    11% picked this

  2. Correct

    A book is a literary

    Why this is right

    By connecting the two conditionals, we had this chain: Literary ? Reveals something ? worthy classic significant serious study This answer uses "only if", which always introduces the right side idea, so this conditional would look like this: Literary ? worthy classic serious study We can definitely prove this, since it's just saying, for our chain above, "If you're the 1st thing, then you're the 3rd thing".

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

    71% picked this

  3. There are no literary classics

    Contradicted

    From the chain we built by combining the two conditionals, Literary ? Reveals something ? worthy classic significant serious study ... we know that all literary classics are worthy of serious study.

    4% picked this

  4. Some books worthy of serious

    Could Be False

    This definitely could be true, but it also could be false, given our chain. Literary ? Reveals something ? worthy classic significant serious study This answer is saying "in some cases, the 3rd thing is true but the 2nd isn't". That wouldn't violate this chain. It's always possible for the Necessary to be true even though the Sufficient is false. It's possible that some books worthy of serious study are not literary classics and thus don't necessarily reveal anything significant about the human condition. But the paragraph didn't talk about any such books, so we don't have any ammunition to prove that this statement must be true.

    5% picked this

  5. Some books that reveal something

    Could Be False

    This definitely could be true, but it also could be false, given our chain. Literary ? Reveals something ? worthy classic significant serious study This answer is saying "in some cases, the 2nd thing is true but the 1st isn't". That wouldn't violate this chain. It's always possible for the Necessary to be true even though the Sufficient is false. It's possible that some books that reveal something significant are not literary classics. But the paragraph didn't talk about any such books, so we don't have any ammunition to prove that this statement must be true.

    9% picked this

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