PT19.S2.Q23 - a museum director, in order to finance

africannarp

http://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-19-section-2-question-23/
Can anyone kindly analyze this argument for me?

c.janson35

Sure thing!

The museum director sold off paintings he believed to be of inferior quality. Critics were angry at this, claiming that the pieces were actually good ones and therefore selling them was bad for museum going public. A little later on, these pieces in question were resold, and this time at a significant markup! So the author is taking the high prices paid for the items as proof that the critics are correct--that the pieces were actually first-rate.

But does a higher resale price mean that the pieces were in fact first rate? Nope. Not at all! And therein lies the flaw. The new buyers could have just really really liked the pieces and, in an effort to ensure that they got them, paid a significant markup. But this wouldn't prove or disprove anything about the quality of the pieces, because price isn't necessarily reflective of quality. Another possibility is that the new buyers were scammed into thinking that the art was once-in-a-generation pieces, and paid for them accordingly. Again, we don't know why they paid higher, whether it was from personal taste or misinformation.

Answer choice E correctly describes this flaw.


Hope this helps!

Matt1234567

The conclusion of the argument is that the critics were right with their evaluation. What's the critics' evaluation? It's that the museum lost first-rate pieces of art. Why? Because the art that the museum director sold to finance expensive new acquisition resold 2-3x the price that the museum got for them.

Tackling this question, you should ask yourself, what is the argument failing to consider? Or what has it taken for granted? These are the two mantras taught by Mike Kim, and for every argument, I ask myself these two questions.

In this instance, the argument has assumed that because the art sold for a higher price, it reflects on the quality of that art. However, does this have to be true? Does price necessarily dictate quality? What if something else caused the prices of the art to be doubled, leaving it's quality intact? Sometimes hype causes the price of individual things to double, but it does not say anything about the quality of the product.

Answer choice E) gets at this flaw. The argument does base its conclusions on facts( art being sold double its original price that the museum got) that could, in the given situation, have resulted from causes other than those presupposed by the argument (art piece must have been first-rate because it sold for double the original price).

africannarp

@Matt1234567 said:
Answer choice E) gets at this flaw. The argument does base its conclusions on facts( art being sold double its original price that the museum got) that could, in the given situation, have resulted from causes other than those presupposed by the argument (art piece must have been first-rate because it sold for double the original price).

@c.janson35 said:
But does a higher resale price mean that the pieces were in fact first rate? Nope. Not at all! And therein lies the flaw. The new buyers could have just really really liked the pieces and, in an effort to ensure that they got them, paid a significant markup. But this wouldn't prove or disprove anything about the quality of the pieces, because price isn't necessarily reflective of quality. Another possibility is that the new buyers were scammed into thinking that the art was once-in-a-generation pieces, and paid for them accordingly. Again, we don't know why they paid higher, whether it was from personal taste or misinformation.

This is super helpful. I had a difficult time trying to fit this answer choice into the argument. Now it all makes sense. Of course, if I had spot the flaw before reading the answers choices, I would have avoided this passive way of solving the problem.

Thanks, guys!!!