Logical reasoning PrepTest 130 · Section 4 · Question 24

Incorrect. The genuine creative geniuses are the ones who are dissatisfied with habitual assent, and they're the ones doing the angering, so this answer draws a connection that's out of scope for the argument.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen with Necessary Premise

Stimulus Summary:
Genuine creative genius → not Satisfied with assent
not Satisfied with assent → Tend to seek controversy
Seek controversy → Enjoy demonstrating falsehoods
Therefore: Genuine creative genius → Tend to anger majority

Answer Anticipation:
While these statements aren't "pure" conditionals, using clear indicator words and lacking language such as "tend to," this argument is very much about connecting ideas together, so we can use the same general idea behind conditionals to track those connections. And similar to a purely conditional argument, we can start to build these connections into a chain that should help us see where the gap is in the argument.

Looking at the conclusion, we can see that there's a new term—Tending to anger the majority. Since a new term is in the conclusion, the premises will build a bridge from the other term, and so we should start there, with the genuine creative genius.

A premise establishes that these individuals aren't satisfied with habitual assent, and people who aren't satisfied with that assent tend to seek controversy:

Creative genius → not Satisfied with assent → Seek controversy

From there, we can add on the last premise, stating that controversy seekers enjoy demonstrating popular falsehoods:

Genuine creative genius → Enjoy demonstrating popular falsehoods

And that's the end of our chain! We're out of premises. Since the argument takes one more step, the assumption we should be looking for connects the end of the chain to the new term in the conclusion:

Enjoy demonstrating popular falsehoods → Tend to anger majority

And one last note—since these aren't true conditionals, we can't take the contrapositive of that statement, so that should make it even easier to find the correct answer!

Answer Explanation:
This answer connects the terms we identified as needing connecting in the anticipation step. Based on the premises, we could infer that the genuine creative genius enjoys demonstrating popular falsehoods. If doing angers the majority, then the conclusion holds.

Key Takeaway:
Some arguments will be about drawing connections between terms and elements even if they aren't purely conditional. While you shouldn't think of them as conditional, you can use something like conditional notation to track those connections and make it easier to see where the gap in the logic is.

Incorrect. Not holding beliefs held by the majority may be related to some of the terms in the stimulus, but they're not directly connected. For example, while these geniuses don't habitually assent to widely held beliefs, they may agree with them after careful consideration.

Incorrect. This answer reverses the connection needed for the argument to work.

Incorrect. This answer is, again, a reversal of a connection that would allow the premises to build to the conclusion (even if this one cuts out a few of the connections).