PT49, S4, Q10 To be great, an artwork must

[rob.schimmel]

The fact that "computers" is in the correct answer choice for this question completely threw me off. I went with choice C...is it wrong because it violates the necessary and sufficient conditional of "if art is great, it must show deep emotion, but if it shows deep emotion, it is not necessarily great?"

[noah]

Preptest 49 June 2006 LSAT Answers


10. (D)
Question type: Inference
This question presents a set of statements: great art requires that the creator express a deep emotion, and that creator must actually be capable of experiencing a specific emotion for the artwork to express it. What can be inferred from this? (D) follows closely from the argument: if computers _ a potential creator of art _ can’t experience emotions, they cannot create great art (since great art requires . . .).

The most attractive of the wrong answers is arguably (A), since it seems to offer an example of an art creator being unable to create art without being capable of experiencing the emotion that art expresses. However, it actually states that the computer/creator must have actually experienced the emotion, while the argument limits it to being capable of having that emotion. Answer choice (B) oversteps the argument since the argument does not discuss degrees of greatness, while (C) presents reversed logic. The argument says that Great Art -> Express Deep Emotion, and so the only thing we can infer is the contrapositive: ~ Express Deep Emotion -> ~ Great Art (not Express Deep Emotion -> Great Art, as answer (C) suggests). Finally, since great artists can produce anything they want, including art that is not great, (E) is incorrect.

So, you're right about why (C) is incorrect.