LR Question 11 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Art critic: The Woerner Journalism Award for criticism…
QUESTION TYPE: Principle – Strengthen
CONCLUSION: Paulsen shouldn’t have gotten the criticism award.
REASONING: The award should go for criticism. Paulsen reviewed cars, which are utilitarian objects, not works of art. Objects that aren’t art will not reveal truths about the culture around them.
ANALYSIS: This sounds like a good argument. But the author hasn’t shown that writing can only be criticism if it talks about art. Maybe car reviews can be criticism.
We want to prove the author right. So we need to say something should not be criticism if it did some of the things Paulsen’s writing did.
___________
- We don’t know how Paulsen portrayed cars. Paulsen may not have claimed they were works of art.
- CORRECT. Car reviews don’t reveal truths, because only writing about art reveals truths. So Paulsen shouldn’t get the award.
- Paulsen may have written her reviews for the purpose of revealing truths. She would have failed, since cars aren’t art, but she still would have had the right purpose.
- We don’t know whether Paulsen considers herself to be a critic.
- We want to prove that Paulsen’s writing is not criticism. This can’t help with that. It’s a sufficient condition. It doesn’t say that something is not criticism if it doesn’t reveal truths about a culture.
More Resources for Principle Questions
- Intro Course lesson: This intro course lesson covers Principle questions.
- Mastery Seminar lesson: This LR Mastery seminar lesson covers principle questions.
C is incorrect also because it mentions important truth about “the writer’s culture”. This is out of scope. We were told only about truths about the culture that produced the works of art, not the writer’s culture.
It’s very good to be precise in your reading of the stimulus, but this might be too literal a reading. I’d argue that it’s fair to assume that the critic they mention is part of the culture that produced these works of art. We’re not really given any indication in the passage that Nan is not a part of that culture.
Many LSAT questions do ask you to make common sense assumptions, so it’s important to strike a balance between reading each stimulus, RC passage, and answer choice closely, and remaining open to the possibility that some questions will ask you to make common sense assumptions that don’t 100% adhere to the letter of the text you’re asked to analyze.