LSAT 154 – Section 4 – Question 20

LSAT 154 - Section 4 - Question 20

September 2017

You need a full course to see this video. Enroll now and get started in less than a minute.

Ask a tutor

Target time: 1:42

This is question data from the 7Sage LSAT Scorer. You can score your LSATs, track your results, and analyze your performance with pretty charts and vital statistics - all with a Free Account ← sign up in less than 10 seconds

Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT154 S4 Q20
+LR
Sufficient assumption +SA
Conditional Reasoning +CondR
Link Assumption +LinkA
A
11%
160
B
71%
165
C
8%
157
D
6%
159
E
4%
157
138
151
165
 +Medium 147.301 +SubsectionMedium

Critic: The more a novel appeals to the general public, the more money its author will make from it. However, since any serious novelist cares about literary style, no serious novelist is motivated primarily by the desire to make money.

Summary
The author concludes that all serious novelists are NOT motivated primarily by desire to make money. This is based on the fact taht all serious novelists care about literary style.

Missing Connection
We’re trying to conclude that serious novelists are NOT motivated primarily by desire to make money. But we don’t have any premise that establishes when someone is not motivated primarily by desire to make money. So, at a minimum, the correct answer must tell us what leads to “not motivated primarily by desire to make money.”
To go further, we can anticipate a more specific connection between the premise and conclusion. We know from the premise that serious novelists care about literary style. To make the argument valid, we want to get from “care about literary style” to “not motivated primarily by desire to make money.”

A
No novel written by a serious novelist in fact appeals to the general public.
(A) doesn’t establish anything about a novelists’ motivations. Since neither this answer nor the premise establishes anything about a novelists’ motivations, it cannot make the argument valid.
B
No novelist who cares about literary style is motivated primarily by the desire to make money.
(B) establishes that if a novelist cares about literary style, then they are NOT motivated primarily by desire to make money. (”No A is B” = “If A, then Not B.”) Since we know that serious novelists care about literary style, (B) allows us to conclude that serious novelists aren’t motivated primarily by making money.
C
No novelist whose novels exhibit good literary style is motivated primarily by the desire to make money.
We don’t know whether serious novelists’ works “exhibit good literary style.” We know that the noveslists care about style, but that doesn’t imply their works have good literary style. So (C) doesn’t interact with the premise and cannot make the argument valid.
D
Any novelist who is motivated primarily by the desire to make money writes novels that in fact appeal to the general public.
We don’t know that serious novelists’ works are novels that do NOT appeal to the general public. So we can’t use (D) to establish that serious novelists aren’t motivated primarily by desire to make money.
E
Any novel that in fact appeals to the general public was written by a novelist motivated primarily by the desire to make money.
We’re trying to prove that serious novelists are NOT motivated primarily by desire to make money. (E) allows us to reach a conclusion that someone IS motivated primarily to make money.

Take PrepTest

Review Results

LSAT PrepTest 154 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Reading Comprehension

Section 4 - Logical Reasoning

Get full LSAT course

Leave a Reply