Logical Reasoning

PT149 · S3 · Q12 In a scene in an ancient Greek play

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In a scene in an ancient Greek play, Knights, the character Demosthenes opens a writing tablet on which an oracle had written a prophecy, and while looking at the tablet, he continuously expresses his amazement at its contents.

Statements

In a play, Demosthenes starts reading a tablet with a prophecy on it, from an oracle.

Demosthenes's buddy can see the amazement on Demosthenes's face and is like, "What is it? What is it?"

So, Demosthenes tells his buddy what's up.

Evaluate

This is an odd question stem, but the idea of , is closest to a Must Be False task.

On Must Be False questions, the correct answer usually contradicts a conditional rule or contradicts an available inference. But in the paragraph we read there was no conditional rule and there aren't any obvious inferences that can be made.

We could infer stuff like, , since we know that Demosthenes reacted with surprise.

We could say ""Demosthenes's buddy didn't have a good view of the front of the tablet", since the buddy had to ask "what is it? what is it?"

We can infer that "Demosthenes is willing to share some prophetic messages with other people", since Demosthenes shared the news with his buddy.

Goal

We would have practically no idea what we're looking for. So with each answer, we'll just ask ourselves, "Does the passage seem to contradict this?"

If an answer brings up something we never talked about, then it's probably automatically wrong, because we can only contradict stuff we talked about.

12.

Of the following claims, which one can most justifiably be rejected on the basis of the statements above?

  1. In ancient Greek plays, characters

    Out of Scope

    Out of Scope: presumed to be literate Nothing in this paragraph talks about the audience's expectations regarding characters' literacy, so we wouldn't be able to contradict an answer dealing with that.

    13% picked this

  2. The character of Demosthenes in

    Out of Scope: historical figure

    We have no idea what the character of Demosthenes was based on, so we have no ammunition to contradict this claim.

    7% picked this

  3. In ancient Greek plays, the

    Too Weak

    This is worth keeping on a first pass, since we have an example in which Demosthenes did not initially read aloud the written text on the tablet (we know this because his buddy had to ask him, "What does it say?!") But this answer choice only says "commonly", not "always". If someone says "Professional violinists commonly took lessons when they're in elementary school", we're not contradicting them by saying "Not Marissa! She's a pro and didn't take lessons until college". Our ammunition for pushing back on this claim is weak, because saying "X didn't happen in this case" is not a strong way to argue "X doesn't commonly occur".

    17% picked this

  4. Correct

    In ancient Greece, people did

    Why this is right

    Since this is categorical, it's easier to contradict (you only need one example). Do we have at least one example of someone in Ancient Greece who did read silently to themselves? Yes, when Demosthenes first reads the tablet, it's silently to himself. Otherwise, his buddy wouldn't need to ask "What is it? What is it?" The one weird thing about picking this answer is that we're contradicting an answer choice that's about actual Ancient Greece, not about characters in ancient Greek plays. However, it's not a true must be false question stem, just a most justifiably rejected stem, so we're allowed a little fuzziness.

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

    55% picked this

  5. Only rarely in ancient Greece

    Too Weak

    Similar to (C), we have an example that goes against this trend, but a counterexample does not invalidate a soft generalization. We're making a weak counterargument if we say, "What do you mean rarely? Prophecies were commonly written down on writing tablets! After all, I have one example from a play where that happened." We might know someone didn't meet his biological mother until he was in his 50s. That wouldn't prove that "people commonly don't meet their biological mothers until they're in their 50s."

    8% picked this

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