Logical Reasoning

PT158 · S2 · Q1 Many People who simply enjoy

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Many people who simply enjoy listening to popular music do not realize that it has been used to express religious and political messages.

Conclusion

Popular music has been used to express religious and political messages.

Intermediate Conclusion (After all)

Popular music has repeatedly been adopted by social movements to express their viewpoints.

Evidence (since)

Popular music has the potential to contribute to the "conversion" of nonmembers to the movement's position, as well as to raise the morale and to express the solidarity of the movement's participants.

Evaluate

Most arguments on Main Conclusion and Role are Upside Down Arguments (the conclusion comes before the evidence).

On Main Conclusion, 65% of them have a Pivot / Rebuttal conclusion 25% of them have a First Sentence conclusion

The first sentence has some slight rebuttal vibes because the author is saying something that many people don't realize. It otherwise doesn't sound super opinionated, so it's not an obvious contender for being our Main Conclusion.

But then, "after all" tells us that what follows is support for the sentence before it, so the first sentence is the main conclusion and the "after all" is support. We then see that the "after all" claim is supported by a "since" supporting idea. This tells us that the "after all" claim would count as an intermediate conclusion. It's supporting the main conclusion in the first sentence, but it's being supported by the third claim in the stimulus.

Goal

Look for the closest match for the first sentence. We can lop off the part about "many people don't realize that X" and just look for X. The author didn't try to convince us that many people don't realize something. He just tried to convince us of the idea they don't realize: pop music has been used to express religious and political messages.

1.

Which one of the following most accurately expresses the main conclusion of the argument?

  1. Popular music accounts for the

    Premise

    This answer provides an idea that was never stated in the paragraph, so it's immediately unappealing. It doesn't look like a match for our first sentence, since this answer talks about "the success of social movements", which is definitely not in the first sentence. It's trying to bait us into making some inference from the fact that pop music has the potential to contribute to the goals of social movements.

    4% picked this

  2. Popular music's entertainment value has

    Out of Scope

    The argument never discusses whether popular music's entertainment value has been "overemphasized." This looks nothing like our first sentence, other than that it talks about pop music. We want "Pop music has been used to express religious and political messages", which is a descriptive idea. This claim is negative and about something else entirely "entertainment value".

    11% picked this

  3. Popular music is the most

    Premise

    This answer provides an extreme idea that was never stated in the paragraph, so it's immediately unappealing. It doesn't look like a match for our first sentence, since this answer talks about "converting people to social movements", which is definitely not in the first sentence.

    4% picked this

  4. Correct

    Popular music has purposes other

    Why this is right

    What? Are you nuts? This is the best available answer? What a stupid test. Clearly our first sentence is much more specific than this broad claim. This answer sounds more like an inference you can derive from "pop music has been used to express religious and political messages" than a restatement of that idea. We're ultimately picking this because A) it's the best available match for the first sentence B) this answer is supported by the rest of the argument. Why should we believe that pop has purposes other than entertainment? Because .... it's also been used to express religious and political messages, such as by social movements hoping to gain converts by using pop music express their viewpoints, raise morale, and express solidarity. This is an extremely dumb correct answer. The actual main conclusion is support for this claim. But at least the entire paragraph fits underneath choice (D). That can't be said of any of the other answers.

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

    80% picked this

  5. Popular music has a profound

    Out of Scope

    The argument never discusses popular music's emotional impact on listeners. This has nothing to do with our conclusion, which is that "pop music has been used to express religious and political messages".

    1% picked this

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