LSAT 103 – Section 2 – Question 25

LSAT 103 - Section 2 - Question 25

September 1998

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Question QuickView	Type	Tags	Answer Choices	Curve	Question Difficulty	Psg/Game/S Difficulty	Explanation
PT103 S2 Q25	+LR	Necessary assumption +NA Conditional Reasoning +CondR	A 21% 165 B 6% 164 C 2% 156 D 4% 159 E 67% 169	148 159 171	+Harder	149.468 +SubsectionMedium

Monica: The sculpture commissioned for our town plaza has been scorned by the public ever since it went up. But since the people in our town do not know very much about contemporary art, the unpopularity of the work says nothing about its artistic merit and thus gives no reason for removing it.

Hector: You may be right about what the sculpture’s popularity means about its artistic merit. However, a work of art that was commissioned for a public space ought to benefit the public, and popular opinion is ultimately the only way of determining what the public feels is to its benefit. Thus, if public opinion of this sculpture is what you say, then it certainly ought to be removed.

Summary

Hector concludes that, if Monica is correct that public opinion dislikes a recent public sculpture, then the sculpture should be removed. Why? Because public art should benefit the public, and public opinion is the only way to tell what the public feels is beneficial.

Notable Assumptions

Hector uses a measure of what the public feels about a sculpture to indicate the actual benefit of the sculpture. This depends on the assumption that when the public feels a sculpture is not beneficial, that indicates that the sculpture is truly not beneficial.

no matter what the public’s opinion is on an issue affecting the public good, that public opinion ought to be acted on, even though the opinion may not be a knowledgeable one

Hector’s argument is based on the idea that the public benefit should be pursued, and relies on equating what the public thinks is beneficial to what is truly beneficial. That’s possible even without following public opinion no matter what—this assumption is unnecessary.

Monica’s assessment of the public’s opinion of the sculpture is accurate

Hector’s conclusion is phrased as a conditional, so it doesn’t depend on whether Monica’s assessment is accurate. It just wouldn’t be triggered if Monica’s assessment is inaccurate.

if the sculpture had artistic merit, then even a public that was not knowledgeable about modern art would not scorn the sculpture

Hector isn’t concerned with the sculpture’s artistic merit, just whether it benefits the public. That makes this, like (D), both unnecessary and irrelevant.

works of art commissioned for public spaces ought not to be expected to have artistic merit

Like (C), this is simply irrelevant, because Hector’s argument doesn’t involve whether or not the sculpture has artistic merit.

if the public feels that it does not benefit from the sculpture, this shows that the public does not in fact benefit from the sculpture

Hector infers that the public scorning the sculpture would mean the sculpture was not beneficial, on the basis that the public would not feel the sculpture was beneficial. This requires assuming that public feelings about the sculpture’s benefit actually indicate that benefit.

LSAT 103 – Section 2 – Question 25

LSAT 103 - Section 2 - Question 25

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LSAT PrepTest 103 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

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