Logical Reasoning

PT18 · S4 · Q21 Jane: Professor Harper’s ideas for modifying

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Jane: Professor Harper’s ideas for modifying the design of guitars are of no value because there is no general agreement among musicians as to what a guitar should sound like and, consequently, no widely accepted basis for evaluating the merits of a guitar’s sound.

Jane's Conclusion

Professor H's ideas for redesigning the guitar are of no value.

Jane's Evidence

There isn't any consensus on what a guitar should sound like, so there's no objective way to measure how good the sound of a guitar is or isn't.

Mark's Conclusion (implied)

Professor H's ideas aren't great.

Mark's Evidence

If Prof H's ideas were good (like Torres's ideas), we'd see Prof H's ideas adopted in a relatively short time period, as Torres's ideas were.

Evaluate

The question is asking for the relationship between the two arguments (not a normal question stem).

They seem to have sympathetic feelings about the un-impressiveness of Professor H's guitar ideas. They each offer different evidence for a similar conclusion.

Goal

Look for any answer that descriptively matches. It will probably say that each raises an independent consideration in support of a similar conclusion.

21.

Which one of the following most accurately describes the relationship between Jane’s argument and Mark’s argument?

  1. Mark’s argument shows how a

    Out of Scope: weakness

    Although Mark provides another premise, he doesn't do so out of any explicit concern that Jane's argument currently contains some weakness. He just says, "What's more ... [is this other premise]."

    13% picked this

  2. Mark’s argument has a premise

    Opposite

    They have different premises, same conclusion.

    18% picked this

  3. Mark and Jane use similar

    Opposite

    They use different techniques to argue for the same conclusion.

    5% picked this

  4. Mark’s argument restates Jane’s argument

    Out of Scope: restates

    Although Mark seems to be arguing for a similar conclusion, he doesn't restate anything Jane says. Everything Mark says is unique to Mark's paragraph.

    18% picked this

  5. Correct

    Mark’s argument and Jane’s argument

    Why this is right

    Sneaky! Lucky for us, the other four answers have pretty strong mismatching qualities, so we're forced to work at understanding this answer choice. We were looking for an answer saying that Mark's and Jane's arguments were based on different premises. But competing suppositions means more than just different; it means that their premises conflict with each other. Do they? Jane was saying "there's no general agreement about what a guitar should sound like / no widely accepted way to say how good a guitar sounds". Mark was saying "Torres's design was near-universally adopted because it makes an improvement in tonal quality". As far as Jane is concerned, there's no such thing as saying one guitar has an improved sound/tone over another guitar, since there aren't widely accepted standards for the what a good guitar sounds like. But Mark is acting like Torres guitars pretty much objectively sound better. He implies that T's guitar design really did result in superior sound, unlike Harper's design. So, sure, choice (E), we could say that Jane's premise and Mark's premise are conflicting suppositions, since one person thinks there's no widely accepted way to judge the quality of a guitar's sound and the other person thinks that a rival guitar maker has been widely judged to have a higher quality sound.

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

    45% picked this

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