PT77.S4.Q22 - theorist: hatred and anger

aakkggzzz

Taking the LSAT Saturday, while reviewing some LR questions today I came across something that sucks up a bunch of my time. It's the silly word "generalization" !

This is a labeling question where we need to figure out the role played by the statement "for music is merely sound". Two of the answer choices begin with "it is a generalization..." and I struggled to quickly eliminate them. After about a minute on the question I was able to eliminate those answer choices and choose the correct answer, but I got stuck got longer than I'd like. Has anyone come up with a quick way to eliminate the "generalization" answer choice? I believe I've come across this option in previous prep tests and I can't recall any instances where this was the correct answer... anyone have an example of that?

Thanks and good luck everyone!
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-77-section-4-question-22/

Cant Get Right

Well most importantly, don't get stuck at all! Skip it if you get bogged down!

As far as eliminating answers with "generalization," you want to check to make sure that that is a factually accurate description of what is happening. So is saying that "music is merely sound" generalizing anything? I mean, maybe. If the conclusion had been specifically talking about Beethoven's 7th, and then it had used this statement, then yeah, I think that would definitely be a generalization. Since it's not any more general than the rest of the argument though, I'm not sure. It's still a general statement, but is it a generalization within the context? I guess that depends on if the concept of generalization depends on a sense of relativity or not. So to use Beethoven's 7th again, that would be less general than music, but more general than say, the first movement from within that piece.

I think this is a really interesting question, but probably not a productive one under time. Both of those answer choices could have been more easily eliminated for other reasons. If you get hung up on something like that, try looking at the answer choice from a different angle. You may not even need to understand the thing that's holding you up, as was the case here.