Necessary Assumption - Literature Department

dcdcdcdcdc

Really struggling with this question: https://7sage.com/lesson/literature-departments-responsibility-na-question/?ss_completed_lesson=1785

I did eliminate A, B, C and D for reasons given by JY, but I cannot bring myself to see that E is a necessary assumption.

Wigmore doesn't give us any opinion on advertisements being "true literary works." He does not concede the point. He merely says, whatever, I don't know about ads.

Please share your thoughts.

In E we get that the literature department’s responsibility is not limited to teaching students how to analyze true literary works.

The negation test gets us to "lit dept. IS limited to teaching analysis of true literary works."

Why does Wigmore's argument suffer from that negation? He left open the possibility that, hey, maybe these ads ARE true literary works.

I get that in the case of ads NOT being true literary works, this is a necessary assumption because the dept. would need to teach things other than true literary works to include ads. But this does not have to be the case as we have no definite decision on whether ads are true literary works or not.

It seems that because Wigmore leaves open the possibility of ads being true lit works or not being true lit works that in the case of ads being true lit works then E has no impact and in the case of ads not being true lit works E is necessary.

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EDIT: Ok, starting to click perhaps. If Wigmore argues from a position of expressing no opinion about ads' position as literary works, he had better leave open the possibility that his conclusion can be drawn from either situation. In that case, when Ads are not true literary works, he had better think that the department can still teach them. Such an assumption operating on the case when ads are true lit works doesn't do squat for the argument, but that is exactly how necessary assumptions work; the don't really help, but they can damage. Here we had to check for two possibilities because the choice specifically mentioned a variable element in the stimulus.

Edmond.Dantes

Conceptually. If curriculum is limited to true literary text, then "true literary text" becomes the necessary condition:

Curriculum -> True Literary Text
(All materials in the curriculum must be true literary text)

But, the argument says the curriculum must also include "analyzing/understanding text", which is not the same as "true literary text".

So do you see how the argument assumes that the curriculum is NOT limited to just true literary text? (which is E). Because if so, the argument collapses.

runiggyrun

@dcdcdcdcdc you got it! Your edit is an example of how one should go about BR. Dig in until you understand why an answer is right or wrong, rather than justify your own opinion that it isn't necessarily so.

dcdcdcdcdc

@runiggyrun Thanks! I learned a long time ago not to fight with LSAC about right and wrong, but rather to force myself to internalize the reasons for that outcome.

This question was particularly tough as I had just come from RRE questions where someone not taking a position was grounds to strike that element from consideration. It also reminded me of questions where we have statements like "even if" which leads me to discount that outcome. Here the necessity element made this sneaky as it wouldn't rear its head in one scenario, but would be devastating in another.

Regarding the comment about "texts" above: I do now see that is one way of picking up on the subtle assumption because the course teaches "texts" in general, which would require the assumption that the department teaches beyond true literary texts in particular. Not sure I would have caught on to that when reading it through though.