Logical reasoning PrepTest 112 · Section 3 · Question 17

Question prompt

The purpose of a Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: D

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Argument or Facts

Facts

Valid or Flawed

NA

Question Type

Must Be True Questions

Stimulus Summary

Goal of General Theory of Art - Explain all aesthetic features of all arts
Premodern General Theories of Art - Focus on sculpture/painting; can’t explain all aesthetic features of music

Answer Anticipation

This Must be True question does something that we generally see in argument-based questions - it brings up a goal. According to the passage, the goal of all general theories of art is to explain all aesthetic features of all arts. Quite ambitious!
It then discusses all premodern general theories of art, and since these theories are general theories, they have the goal of explaining the aesthetics of all arts. However, these theories all failed to explain some aesthetic features of music. If they’re failing to explain an aesthetic feature of music, then they’re failing at their goal of explaining all aesthetic features of all art (assuming that music is an art, but that’s probably fine on the LSAT since it’s a part of the definition).
Let’s find an answer stating that!

Answer choices

  1. A
    Any general theory of Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A is not credited
    While the premodern theories seem to all have focused on both sculpture and painting, there’s no indication that a theory explaining one explains the other And there may have been other modern theories that only explained one or the other.
  2. B
    A general theory of Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited
    It would need to also describe the aesthetic features of all other arts to achieve its purpose, so this answer is unsupported.
  3. C
    Any theory of art Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited
    While the premodern general theories of art focused on sculpture and painting but failed to describe all aspects of music, that doesn’t mean that any general theory is destined to fail to explain all three.
  4. D
    No premodern general theory Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D matches the stem
    Not only does this answer match our anticipation, it hedges its bets by bringing in the question of whether music is an art! Treating “unless” as “if not,” this answer says: If music is an art, then no premodern general theory of art achieves its purpose. Since that purpose is to explain all art, and these theories all fail to fully explain music, this answer must be true.
  5. E
    No premodern general theory Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited
    We know that the premodern theories don’t explain every aesthetic feature of music. However, the ones that they do explain could be shared with sculpture/painting, or they could be separate ones - there’s not enough information in the stimulus to tell us either way.

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A 8%
  2. B 9%
  3. C 20%
  4. D Credited 53%
  5. E 11%

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