Self-study
Most movie critics believe that sentimentality detracts from aesthetic value. ███ █████ ███████ ███ ██████ █████ ███ ██████ ████ ████ ████ ██████ ██ ████ ██████████████ ████████ ██ ████ ██████ ████ ███ ███████ █████ █ █████ ████ ███████████ ██ ████████ ███████████ ████ ███████████ ██ ██ ████ ███████ █████ ████ ██ ███████ ████████ ████ █ ███████ ████ ██ █████████ ██████████ ████ ███ █████████ ██████ ████████ ████ ███ ███████ ██ ███ █████
Argument Summary
Most movie critics think sentimentality hurts a movie's aesthetic value. The author disagrees: the critics are wrong.
Why does the author think they're wrong? Not because of anything about sentimentality itself. Instead, the author offers a theory about how the critics formed their belief. Sentimentality is everywhere in movies, so its absence feels refreshing to people who watch a lot of movies. In other words, the critics aren't reacting to a genuine flaw in sentimentality. They're just tired of it.
The food analogy reinforces this point. If you eat food with the same flavoring every day, you might start thinking the flavoring itself is bad. But really, you're just sick of it. The author is saying the critics are making the same mistake with sentimentality.
The Flaw
The author's reasoning has a clear gap. She explains why the critics came to believe that sentimentality detracts from aesthetic value, and then treats that explanation as proof that the belief is false. But those are two different things. The origin of a belief doesn't determine whether the belief is correct.
Think about it this way. Suppose you eat chocolate cake every single day, and one day you say, "I think chocolate cake isn't actually that good." Someone responds, "You only think that because you eat it every day. You're just tired of it." That might be a perfectly accurate description of how you arrived at your opinion. But it doesn't prove your opinion is wrong. Maybe chocolate cake really isn't that good! The fact that overexposure led you to your belief doesn't settle whether the belief is true.
The same applies here. Even if the critics' belief about sentimentality was shaped by overexposure, sentimentality might still genuinely detract from aesthetic value. The author never engages with whether the critics' belief is actually correct on the merits.
19.
The reasoning in the argument ██ ██████ ██ ████ ███ ████████
a
is based solely ██ ██ █████████████ ██████ ██ █████████
The author never cites any authority to support her conclusion. She doesn't say, "Experts in aesthetics agree that sentimentality doesn't detract from value." Her argument is built entirely around a theory of how the critics formed their belief, not around anyone else's endorsement of her position.
b
rejects a position ██████ ██ ███ ███████ ████ ███████ ███ ██████ ███ ██ ███ ██ ████████ ██████
An "ulterior motive" means someone has a hidden agenda or personal interest in pushing a position. For example, if the author had said the critics bash sentimentality because they want to seem sophisticated or because they're paid by arthouse studios, that would be an ulterior motive.
But the author isn't saying the critics have an agenda. She's saying their belief was shaped by a biased process: overexposure to sentimentality made its absence feel refreshing, which led them to mistake that freshness for a judgment about aesthetic value. That's a claim about the origin of their belief, not about any strategic motivation for promoting it. "How you came to believe something" and "why you're pushing something" are different ideas, and (D) captures the first while (B) describes the second.
c
takes a necessary █████████ ███ █ ███████ █████ ██ ████ █████████ █████ ██ ██ █ ██████████ █████████ ███ ████
This describes a confusion between sufficient and necessary conditions, which would require the argument to identify some condition for high aesthetic value and then mix up whether that condition is required or merely enough. The author never discusses conditions for aesthetic value at all. She simply rejects the critics' view based on how they formed it.
d
concludes that a ████ ██ █████ ██████ ██ ███ ███████ ██ ███ ██████ ████ ██ ███████ ██
This describes the flaw. The author concludes the critics are wrong merely because of how they came to hold their belief (overexposure to sentimentality made its absence feel interesting, which shaped their judgment). But the process that led someone to a belief is separate from whether the belief is true. Even if overexposure is the reason the critics think sentimentality detracts from aesthetic value, sentimentality might still genuinely detract from aesthetic value. The author treats an explanation of the belief's origin as a refutation of the belief itself.
e
takes what is ██████████ ███ ███████████ ███ ███████ ██ █ ████ ██ ██ █████████ ███ █████ ██
Like (C), this describes a sufficient-necessary confusion. This would require the argument to identify something that's enough to diminish quality and then treat it as though it's the only thing that can diminish quality. The author doesn't make any claims about what is or isn't sufficient or necessary for diminishing a movie's quality. Her argument is about the origin of the critics' belief, not about the logical relationship between sentimentality and quality.