A
To be judgmental is to assess someone negatively prior to making a serious effort at understanding.
B
It is absurd to criticize anyone for being critical.
C
There is some plausibility to the claim that it is absurd to criticize anyone for being critical.
D
Not all assessments people make of one another will be positive.
E
There is wisdom behind the injunction against being judgmental.
A
It is a hypothesis that the argument attempts to refute.
B
It is a generalization, one sort of objection to which the argument illustrates by giving an example.
C
It is a claim that, according to the argument, is to be understood in a manner specified by the conclusion.
D
It is a claim that the argument derives from another claim and that it uses to support its conclusion.
E
It is a generalization that the argument uses to justify the relevance of the specific example it cites.
Really tough question. Reading only the question stem, it's not clear what type of question it is. Some general "principle" type, I suppose. So, you read the stimulus and then glance at the answers again. Notice there's an argument in the stimulus. Notice the answers are all conditionals. We're looking for a PSA answer choice. We can get away with fudging some ideas because the question stem has the word "most" in it.
So let's lay the argument out.
Sentence 1 zooms into the subset of "Most TV shows". What about them? They depend on advertising funding.
show alive --> funding
contrapositive
/funding --> /show alive (think canceled show)
Sentence 2 tells us a necessary condition of advertising funding.
funding --> many people buy product
Now we get to chain up:
show alive --> funding --> many people buy product
Sentence 3 runs the contrapositive on the whole chain.
/many people buy product --> /funding --> /show alive
[I think we really could have done without sentence 3 since it's not adding anything new. We could have chained up sentences 1 and 2 on our own and also ran the contrapositive on our own. Sentence 3 feels redundant to me.]
Now, sentence 4, the conclusion.
feel show worth preserving --> buy product
All together now:
[P] show alive --> funding --> many people buy product
__________________
[C] feel show worth preserving --> buy product
What's our most standard, cookie cutter formulation of a PSA or SA answer choice that we are trained to anticipate and look for?
IF P, THEN C
With some cleverly crafted referential phrasing, that's precisely what (B) is saying:
IF [a TV show would be canceled unless many people took certain actions], THEN [everyone who feels that the show is worth preserving out to take those actions]. IF [P], THEN [C]
Try to figure it out before reading on.
IF [P], THEN [C]
[P] is [a TV show would be canceled unless many people took certain actions]
[C] is [everyone who feels that the show is worth preserving out to take those actions]
[P] first. "unless" is group 3, negate sufficient. "not a TV show would be canceled --> many people took certain actions" =
"show alive --> many people took certain actions"
What could those actions possibly be referring to? Buy product.
"show alive --> many people buy product"
Now [C]. "everyone" is group 1, sufficient. "feel show worth preserving --> take those actions" Again, what could those actions possibly be referring to? Again, buy product.
"feel show worth preserving --> buy product"
The problem with answer choice (A) is that it's not describing the same shows that the stimulus is describing. The shows in the stimulus depended for their survival on MANY people buying a product. This conforms to our common sense expectations of TV shows. I would expect that the real life TV shows that depend on advertising funding would depend for their survival on MANY people buying whatever products they're meant to be buying.
(A) however talks about a set of TV shows whose survival depends on ONE single person buying a product. "would be canceled unless one took certain actions" What show in the world's survival is dependent on a single person taking some action? I have no idea. But whatever the TV shows (A)'s talking about, they're not the same TV shows that the stimulus talked about.
A
Those who are easily angered are less likely to recover fully from episodes of heart disease than are other people.
B
Medication designed to control high blood pressure can greatly affect the moods of those who use it.
C
People with permanently high blood pressure who have tranquil personalities virtually never develop heart disease.
D
Those who discover that they have heart disease tend to become more easily frustrated by small difficulties.
E
The physiological factors that cause permanently high blood pressure generally make people quick to anger.
A
Several colleagues of the professor have found that, in their non-business courses, several of their students behave similarly in relation to assignments placed on the computer network.
B
Studies consistently show that most computer users will print reading material that is more than a few pages in length rather than read it on the computer screen.
C
Some people get impaired vision from long periods of reading printed matter on computer screens, even if they use high quality computer screens.
D
Scanning technology is very poor, causing books delivered via computer to be full of errors unless editors carefully read the scanned versions.
E
Books on cassette tape have only a small fraction of the sales of printed versions of the same books, though sales of videos of books that have been turned into movies remain strong.
Some 20th century art is influential.
Some art that involves original ideas is influential.
If art is great, then it is original and influential.
A
Some influential art involves original ideas.
B
Some twentieth-century art involves original ideas.
C
Only art that involves original ideas is influential.
D
Only art that is influential and involves original ideas is great art.
E
Some twentieth-century art is influential and involves original ideas.
Aristophanes’ play The Clouds, which was written when the philosopher Socrates was in his mid-forties, portrays Socrates as an atheistic philosopher primarily concerned with issues in natural science. The only other surviving portrayals of Socrates were written after Socrates’ death at age 70. They portrayed Socrates as having a religious dimension and a strong focus on ethical issues.
"Surprising" Phenomenon
Portrayals of Socrates written after his life are markedly different than the one written during his life.
Objective
The right answer will be a hypothesis that explain why the portrayals of Socrates after his life attribute a religious and ethical dimension to his philosophy, whereas the contemporaneous one ascribes him a strictly atheistic, scientific outlook. We’re looking for something that either says the portrayals had different motivations, or that Socrates himself changes after his portrayal in Aristophanes.
A
Aristophanes’ portrayal of Socrates in The Clouds was unflattering, whereas the other portrayals were very flattering.
The portrayals are diametrically opposed. Whether or not they’re flattering doesn’t explain the vast differences in who they say Socrates really is.
B
Socrates’ philosophical views and interests changed sometime after his mid-forties.
Aristophanes portrays Socrates at age 40. If his views changed afterwards, and if those are the views he’s remembered best for, then it absolutely makes sense later portrayals would emphasize those. This explains the discrepancy in the stimulus.
C
Most of the philosophers who lived before Socrates were primarily concerned with natural science.
We don’t care about other philosophers. We need to know why later portrayals of Socrates differed from the contemporaneous one.
D
Socrates was a much more controversial figure in the years before his death than he was in his mid-forties.
We need to know more about Socrates as a controversial figure for this to be right. How did the controversy influence those later portrayals? Why were they so different than the one in Aristophanes? We simply don’t have enough information to choose this answer.
E
Socrates had an influence on many subsequent philosophers who were primarily concerned with natural science.
This doesn’t explain why Socrates was portrayed as an ethical and religious philosopher after his life. If this answer were true and he influenced philosophers concerned with natural science, why didn’t later accounts portray him as the scientific figure in Aristophanes?