Q10 - The idealized world portrayed...

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Sufficient Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Romance/Satire: characters with morality that reflects world
Comedy/Tragedy: characters with morality that changes
Therefore, C/T can't be R/S.

Answer Anticipation:
In order to get to the conclusion, the argument needs to prove that the characteristics of C/T can't overlap with those of R/S. The characteristics we learn about each pair of genres speaks to the morality of the characters, but these characteristics don't contradict each other, which the critic needs them to do in order to prove her point.

The answer will state that characters with changing morality can't reflect the world, or characters with world-reflecting morality can't change.

Correct Answer:
(D)

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) Out of scope. The argument cares about the morality of characters. This answer choice conflates what we know about the worlds of R/S with the characters of C/T.

(B) Tempting! This answer connects the change in C/T with the vision of the world. However, it doesn’t connect the changing morality of characters in C/T with reflecting these changes in the world; maybe the two change in different ways.

(C) Out of scope. Similar to (A), this answer choice connects the character in C/T (and it doesn't even mention the C part) with characteristics of the world in R/S. It still doesn't tell us that the character's changing morality reflects the world.

(D) Bingo. This answer isn't exactly what we were looking for, but it serves the same purpose - drawing a line in the sand between R/S and C/T. In C/T, characters change. This answer tells us that they don't in R/S. The two genre pairs are now mutually exclusive, which is what the conclusion states.

(E) Premise booster/out of scope. The argument only speaks to major characters, so, if anything, this answer choice just builds on what we already know.

Takeaway/Pattern: When a conclusion states that two things are mutually exclusive, look for an answer that states one of the "things" can't have something necessary for the other "thing".

#officialexplanation

[keonheecho]

Hi, I understand why this answer choice is better than the others, but is it really sufficient? I get the leap of logic here (there must be a difference between the two), but is this difference itself sufficient for the conclusion to be true? Isnt there also the leap in the idea of classification? The argument is assuming that the difference is enough of a reason to classify the genres into different groups. So then wouldnt it not be sufficient for simply the difference in genre to lead to the conclusion? I hope this question makes sense..thank you!

[rinagoldfield]

Hi keonheecho,

Thanks for your post! I’m not sure I *quite* follow your question, but I will argue that this assumption is sufficient. This is a very conditional-logic-y question, so it will be helpful to diagram out what we know:

Premises:

Romance--> characters reflect a certain [idealized] world
Satire--> characters reflect a certain [debased] world
Comedy/tragedy-->characters change

Conclusion:

Comedy/tragedy-->~ romance + ~ satire.

If we chain the given premises to the conclusion, we can see the assumption more clearly:

Comedy/tragedy-->characters change … ~characters reflect a certain world -->~romance+~satire

The assumption is right in the “…”

(D) states:
Romance / satire --> ~change
Which works, because it is the contrapositive of something we can use. If we plug it back into our original chain, we have:
Romance/satire --> ~change --> ~comedy + ~ tragedy

Which is the contrapositive of the original conclusion. Boom.

[hnadgauda]

I do now understand how the conclusion was diagrammed as Comedy/tragedy-->~ romance + ~ satire.

The conclusion is "neither tragedy nor comedy can be classified as satirical literature or romance literature." I diagrammed this as:

~comedy/~tragedy-->romance+satire

Am I diagramming neither...nor statements wrong?

Thank you.

[MarisaP485]

Hi there,

Can someone help write out the formal notations for each of the answer choice. I'm grasping the chain and how D fits in, but it'd be helpful to clearly see the conditional logic for the other answer choices so I can count them out.

Thanks!

[Misti Duvall]

Hi there,

Can someone help write out the formal notations for each of the answer choice. I'm grasping the chain and how D fits in, but it'd be helpful to clearly see the conditional logic for the other answer choices so I can count them out.

Thanks!

Sure! (Note these are written out a little more than normal, for clarity.)

A) Not conditional (note some).

B) visions world tragedy or visions world comedy --> change

C) character idealized beginning of tragedy --> character debased at end

D) romance lit or satirical lit --> - character moral qualities change

E) comedy or tragedy --> minor character moral qualities change

Hope this helps.