LSAT 31, Logical Reasoning I, Q18, LSATHacks

LR Question 18 Explanation, by LSATHacks

QUESTION TEXT: Not all works of art represent something, but some do…

QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning

CONCLUSION: There cannot be any clear criteria for determining whether an object is art.

REASONING: Whether a work of art possesses the property of representation is dependent on context. Yet there are no clear criteria for determining whether context dependent criteria exist in an object. 

ANALYSIS: This is one of the most confusing LSAT question I’ve seen in a while. 

The argument proved that it’s impossible to tell if something is representational. That doesn’t prove that it’s impossible to tell if something is art.

There could be other qualities that make something art apart from representation. The argument hasn’t shown that we cannot use those to figure out if something is art. 

Massive shortcut on this question: only answer choice C talks about judging whether or not something is a work of art. 

The rest don’t. Done. That’s probably a better strategy than spending five minutes scratching your head about A, B, D and E. 

___________

1. This is good except for the bit about judging our aesthetic experience. The conclusion was about determining if something was art. That’s not quite the same as judging our aesthetic experience.
2. Whether something has aesthetic properties is not directly relevant to whether we can judge it to be a work of art.
3. CORRECT. The argument has only made the case that we can’t always judge if a work of art is representational. 
4. This may be true, but it doesn’t affect whether or not we can tell if the objects are or are not works of art.
5. This has nothing to do with whether we can judge if an object is a work of art. 

Hi, I'm Graeme Blake

Founder of LSAThacks; I scored a 177 on the LSAT.

I created the LSAT Mastery Seminars, which are part of the Ultimate LSAT Prep Bundle

If you like the explanations you're reading I'm 100% confident you'll enjoy the courses. Satisfaction guaranteed.

---------
Updates:

For updates, sign up for my email list. I update whenever I have new posts.