Q9 - Fraenger's assertion that the artist...

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Determine the Function

Stimulus Breakdown:
F makes a claim with which the author disagrees (at least, thinks is unlikely). Why? It might explain his subject matter, but there's no actual evidence it's true (the statement in question).

Answer Anticipation:
The statement is the only real evidence the author gives that her claim is true! Why does the author think H wasn't in the Brethren? Because there's no evidence for it.

Correct answer:
(D)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Degree. The author concludes that F's assertion is unlikely to be true, not false as this answer claims.

(B) Wrong function. B's membership in the church is a premise without support, so the statement in question certainly can't be a premise for it.

(C) I like the first half! It is a claim that questions F's hypothesis, but it doesn't go after F's credibility.

(D) I don't love this answer on the first pass, but I'd leave it. This seems to be one of those answers that's relatively imprecise (there are better ways to describe the answer) while being technically true. I'd resign myself to picking it after checking out (E), but I certainly wouldn't be 100% on this until I ruled out all other answers.

(E) While F's theory would help explain B's subject matter, and the author disagrees with that explanation, it's a jump to say the subject matter is unexplained. The author might think there's another explanation out there that also works.

Takeaway/Pattern:
Questions with abstract answers will sometimes have technically correct answers that are not phrased nearly as well as they could be. Don't use that to rule it out - after all, technically correct is the best kind of correct!

#officialexplanation

[priyanka.krishnamurthy]

Hi:

I ended up choosing A on this one, and upon further review understand the validity of AC D (questioning the sufficiency vis-a-vi "no evidence that he was a member of the Brethren), but would like some further explanation on eliminating A. Is it perhaps the extreme language used: "GUARANTEES the FALSITY," which is something that doesn't really happen as it really just states there is no evidence suggesting he was of the Brethren church?

Any help, advise, would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[frank0478]

It’s a premise that supports the conclusion. Or at least part of.

A. Premise that combined with other, guarantees falsity of F’s assertion. Doesn’t guarantee falsity though
B. Not to support the other premise
C. Doesn’t question F’s credibility
D. Intended to cast doubt on F’s hypothesis by questioning sufficiency of F’s evidence
E. Intended to help show that B’s choice remains unexplained

[andrewgong01]

Going back to answer choice "B", I thought this was a premise as support because the statement before it said there is evidence of him being in mainstream churches. And saying there is no evidence of him being in the Brethren, a non-mainstream church, helps to support the view as support for the idea that he belonged to mainstream churches since he did not belong in the contrary. For "B" to be valid would it have had to say "was member of mainstream church FOR there is no evidence of him being in the Brethren"? In other words, "FOR" would make it explicit that this is support?

[NathanW987]

hello,

can someone please explain exactly why answer choice D is correct for this question? i originally chose answer choice A. now that i am reviewing, i see that the phrase "guarantees the falsity" is too extreme, and thus answer choice A is not correct. however, i still don't really see how answer choice D is correct here. why do we even care about Fraenger's hypothesis that may or may not explain much of Bosch's unusual subject matter? aren't we only concerned with Fraengers assertion that it is unlikely that Bosch belonged to the Brethren of the Free Spirit? i am probably missing something obvious here, so i appreciate the help in advance.

thanks.

[ohthatpatrick]

(to Andrew's question ....
yes, connecting the last two ideas with "for" vs. "and" would have conveyed that claim 2 supported claim 1.

Connecting two ideas with "and" means that claim 1 + claim 2 are supporting some other idea together.

In this case, claim 1 was the author just saying "there exists evidence that B was a member of a mainstream church". Our author isn't trying to convince the reader that B was a member of a mainstream church, she's just saying that there is evidence that he was.

The author's argument is essentially:
I highly doubt that B was an X.
why?
there's some evidence that B wasn't X,
and there's no evidence that B was X.

Some evidence > No evidence.
So more likely NOT X than X.)


As for (D). Let's break down the argument.

CONCLUSION: F's hypothesis is unlikely to be correct.
[translated]: B probably did NOT belong to the Brethren

EVIDENCE: There's evidence B was a member of a mainstream church and no evidence that he was a member of the Brethren.

The statement they're asking about is one of the two premises.

(D) It's intended to cast doubt on F's hypothesis.
translation: it's supporting the conclusion, which is doubting F's hypothesis.

"by questioning the sufficiency of F's evidence"
translation: this premise is helping the author to cast doubt on F's hypothesis by saying something negative about F's evidence.

Sure! The two premises are just saying, "There is some evidence that F is wrong, and there is no evidence that F is right".

Now just to remind everyone at home, .... this answer DOES suck!

There is no chance any of us would have written our version of the correct answer this way. But no part of it is wrong, and so it's the correct answer.

Hope this helps.

[bobjon1259]

(to Andrew's question ....
yes, connecting the last two ideas with "for" vs. "and" would have conveyed that claim 2 supported claim 1.

Connecting two ideas with "and" means that claim 1 + claim 2 are supporting some other idea together.

In this case, claim 1 was the author just saying "there exists evidence that B was a member of a mainstream church". Our author isn't trying to convince the reader that B was a member of a mainstream church, she's just saying that there is evidence that he was.

The author's argument is essentially:
I highly doubt that B was an X.
why?
there's some evidence that B wasn't X,
and there's no evidence that B was X.

Some evidence > No evidence.
So more likely NOT X than X.)


As for (D). Let's break down the argument.

CONCLUSION: F's hypothesis is unlikely to be correct.
[translated]: B probably did NOT belong to the Brethren

EVIDENCE: There's evidence B was a member of a mainstream church and no evidence that he was a member of the Brethren.

The statement they're asking about is one of the two premises.

(D) It's intended to cast doubt on F's hypothesis.
translation: it's supporting the conclusion, which is doubting F's hypothesis.

"by questioning the sufficiency of F's evidence"
translation: this premise is helping the author to cast doubt on F's hypothesis by saying something negative about F's evidence.

Sure! The two premises are just saying, "There is some evidence that F is wrong, and there is no evidence that F is right".

Now just to remind everyone at home, .... this answer DOES suck!

There is no chance any of us would have written our version of the correct answer this way. But no part of it is wrong, and so it's the correct answer.

Hope this helps.

I'm totally lost on this question. How can you question the sufficiency of someone's evidence if they provide no evidence in the first place? Fraenger provided no evidence -- he asserted something. If you told me that pigs could fly, Patrick, but provided no evidence for that statement, I wouldn't say "your evidence is insufficient." Rather, I'd say that "you have no evidence for your ludicrous position that pigs can fly."

Sometimes the language on this test drives me nuts.

[ohthatpatrick]

If you're a cashier, and someone is trying to buy a $6 pack of cigarettes, you can question the sufficiency of their payment whether they've put down on the counter ...
a nickel
a dime
a quarter
$1.39
or nothing at all

Whatever payment or lack thereof that you see on the counter, if it's less than $6, then it's insufficient payment.
Whatever evidence or lack thereof an author has presented, if it's less than conclusive proof of the conclusion then it's insufficient evidence.

At the end, when you said
If you told me that pigs could fly, Patrick, but provided no evidence for that statement, I wouldn't say "your evidence is insufficient." Rather, I'd say that "you have no evidence for your ludicrous position that pigs can fly."

we agree.

Both Matt, who wrote the official explanation, and me, in my previous post responding to someone commiserated with you that this answer is annoyingly written. We wouldn't have said what (D) says; we would have said something different. But that doesn't make (D) wrong. Who cares what we would have said. We're just supposed to be judging whether this answer choice is descriptively accurate.

I wouldn't choose to say "few US Presidents have been women". I would say "no US presidents have been women", but that doesn't make the first statement any less true. (few = less than 50%)

hope this helps

[mswang7]

If B had said "It is used to support the claim that Bosch was not a member of the mainstream church" would that have overtaken D as the correct answer?

[Laura Damone]

No, but if it had said "used to support the claim that Bosch was not a member of the nonmainstream church" it could have been a correct answer. It wouldn't have "overtaken" D. Neither is more correct than the other. But if you wanted to write an alternate correct answer for this question, that's one way to do it.