LSAT 134 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q21

LR Question 21 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: The Iliad and the Odyssey were both attributed to Homer …

QUESTION TYPE: Weaken

CONCLUSION: The Iliad and Odyssey were most likely written by different poets.

REASONING: They differ greatly in tone, vocabulary, and details of the fictional world.

ANALYSIS: The argument is pretty simple. Since the two works are very different, they’re probably written by different people.

But is that necessarily true? Obviously not. A single author can write in different styles, use different vocab, or create different fictional worlds. If that’s possible, then the differences between the two poems are no longer strong evidence that they had different authors.

The answer should show us that different style doesn’t necessarily mean different authors.

___________

1. This tells us that other works attributed to Homer are even more different than these two. But we don’t know whether those hymns were actually written by Homer. Since the argument already questions ancient attributions, this doesn’t tell us much.
2. You might’ve thought that this provides an alternative explanation: the differences are due to copying errors and not because they’re written by different authors. But notice that this says “minor” errors and corruptions, while the argument is based on major differences in tone, vocab, etc. So these small mistakes are unlikely to explain those big differences, and the question of authorship still remains.
3. CORRECT. This directly attacks the argument’s assumption. If we know that a single author can produce works that are just as different as those two poems, then the differences are no longer good evidence that they had different authors.
4. Whether each poem is internally consistent has nothing to do with whether they were written by the same person.
5. This helps the argument, which is trying to prove that the same author didn’t write both poems. If both poems were written by a group of people, then it’s obviously not possible that a single author wrote both of them.