LR Question 18 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Critic: The contemporary novel is incapable of making important …
QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Parallel Reasoning
CONCLUSION: The contemporary novel cannot make important new contributions.
REASONING: Different types of contemporary novels each fail in some way (e.g. contemporary action novels lack social significance).
ANALYSIS: The argument wrongly generalizes some specific categories of contemporary novels to all contemporary novels. It says that any contemporary novel cannot make important new contributions, and the evidence provided only addresses three types of novels (psychological, action, and romance). Just because some types of novels are flawed does not mean the entire category of contemporary novels is incapable of innovation.
The correct answer will exhibit the same flawed reasoning – wrongly concluding that a whole category is deficient based on some of its parts.
___________
- CORRECT. This claims that because governments have failed to regulate employment and inflation, it is impossible for any government to improve the economy. Employment and inflation are analogous to different types of contemporary novels (e.g. action and romance), while the economy is analogous to all contemporary novels in general.
- This is a faulty prediction, but it does not mirror the critic’s overgeneralization.
- This claims that because one writer was forgotten, all popular writers today will also be forgotten. This is an unsubstantiated prediction based on a single historical example. In contrast, the stimulus is generalizing a flaw from some parts of a group to the whole group.
- This assumes the politician doesn’t think unemployment is important simply because they haven’t made any proposals. That’s a flawed assumption about intent, which is not the same as the stimulus.
- Here, there’s an assumption that just because large corporations are best suited for success, small ones cannot compete at all. This is not the same structure or flaw as the stimulus.
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