Logical reasoning PrepTest 136 · Section 2 · Question 19

Incorrect. It claiming to describe it was enough for the Social Scientist to dub it a scientific theory, regardless of its rigor. It's unclear that rigor is a necessary part of a scientific theory! And this doesn't connect to not being a political program, anyway, so it can't justify the conclusion.

Incorrect. This can be a tempting answer since it seems to say that scientific theories and political programs are mutually exclusive. However, what it actually says is that the aims of science are mutually exclusive with the aims of those who seek to transform society. That's not saying a theory can't be both scientific and a political program—just that a person can't be motivated by both of those things.

Incorrect. This answer establishes a necessary condition for being a scientific theory. However, that neither justifies Marxism as a scientific theory (since it's a necessary condition), nor does the stimulus actually establish that Marxism meets this condition (they claim to, but that's not the same as meeting it).

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen with Sufficient Premise

Stimulus Summary:
Marxism should be considered a scientific theory, so those who think it's a political program have misconstrued it.

Answer Anticipation:
Note how much of this stimulus we cut out in our Summary—breaking this down to just the core elements is going to be key to efficiently tackling the question.

How did we get to where we did? That first sentence is itself an argument ("Since...it should . . . "), so there was a chance that the second half of it was going to be the main point we needed to justify. As soon as the next sentence starts, however, we see that that's not the case—the following statement starts with, "Thus," telling us it's a conclusion that rests on the preceding statement.

Since the main point of an argument isn't going to rely on a premise to an intermediate conclusion, we can be pretty certain that the correct answer will connect the intermediate conclusion to the main point, as long as there's a gap there. And there is! The conclusion is that anyone who thinks Marxism is a political program is wrong—in other words, Marxism isn't a political program.

So we're left with this as the key parts of the argument—Marxism is a scientific theory, so it can't be a political program. It's not inherently true, however, that something can't be both, so the correct answer will have to establish that scientific theories and political programs are mutually exclusive for the conclusion to be justified.

Answer Explanation:
If scientific theories and political programs are mutually exclusive—something can't correctly be regarded as both—then the conclusion that Marxism isn't a political program is justified since it's established to be a scientific theory.

Key Takeaway:
Strengthen with Sufficient Premise questions will, at the end of the day, need you to connect two terms that the argument assumes are connected. If you can break the argument down to be a series of connected ideas, it'll be a lot easier to find that gap.

Incorrect. The argument is about what Marxism can/should be considered as, not whether it's predictions come true.