LSAT 155 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q6

LR Question 6 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Critic: Linsey has been judged to be a bad songwriter…

QUESTION TYPE: Identify the Conclusion

CONCLUSION: The judgment of Linsey as a bad songwriter is ill founded.

REASONING: People criticize Linsey for being disjointed and subjective. But many modern writers are held to be good writers despite having disjointed and subjective works.

ANALYSIS: The author notes that people criticize Linsey for disjointed and subjective songwriting, but points out that good writers can have disjointed and subjective works. This leads the author to the conclusion – the arguments that Linsey is a bad songwriter don’t have a proper basis.

You can tell that this is the conclusion because the rest of the argument is in support of it. The author gives the reasons for criticism and attacks those reasons.

___________

1. The author isn’t expressing a personal opinion about Linsey’s songwriting. It’s possible that they don’t like it. But they disagree with the reasoning given by the critics they describe.
2. CORRECT. See above. This is the author’s conclusion.
3. The author uses this to draw a comparison between the treatment of these writers and the treatment of Linsey.
4. The author is certainly not making a claim that many modern novelists are widely held to be good writers. Most of the stimulus is irrelevant to this idea.
5. This is not what the author is concluding. The comparison to writers is only to show that good writers can be subjective and disjointed.

Recap: The question begins with “Critic: Linsey has been judged to be a bad songwriter”. It is a Identify The Conclusion question. Learn more about LSAT Identify questions in our guide to LSAT Logical Reasoning question types.