Logical reasoning PrepTest 146 · Section 1 · Question 2

Incorrect. Known potential alternative sites for Troy wouldn't determine whether this specific site was or wasn't, in fact, Troy. In fact, if there were other candidates, then that would itself call Dorpfeld's conclusion into question, aligning with the argument.

Incorrect. The presence of clues in the Iliad wouldn't determine whether Dorpfeld had found it—those clues could be wrong, or intentionally misleading, or even spot on but misinterpreted by Dorpfeld.

Incorrect. Even if Dorpfeld's team found evidence of a siege, that wouldn't prove this city was Troy as the siege may have been from a different war or era.

Incorrect. Those scholars could have been wrong, so this city matching the expectations or not doesn't play into an argument about whether the city actually was Troy.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Strengthen with Necessary Premise

Stimulus Summary:
An archaeologist dug up a city he thought was Troy, but it was too small to withstand the 10-year siege from Homer's Iliad, so it can't be Troy.

Answer Anticipation:
The argument here throws out the conclusion drawn by an archaeologist that a certain city is the fabled Troy. Why? Because it doesn't match the description given in Homer's Iliad.

Is that a reason to discount the archaeologist? It would need to be established that Homer's works were accurate. After all, he wrote fiction, so there's a chance he embellished certain key features, such as the timeline of the siege. For this argument to work, then, it needs to be assumed that Homer's account of the timeline of the siege on Troy was accurate.

Answer Explanation:
If the Iliad doesn't accurately represent the timeline of the Trojan War, then using the details from it to rebut Dorpfeld's conclusion about the identity of a city falls apart. It's necessary to assume that the Iliad's timeline was accurate for this argument to work, so this is the correct answer.

Key Takeaway:
This argument is interesting in that it has an inappropriate appeal to authority, but that authority is an epic poem. In any case, whenever the premise supporting a conclusion relies on what something says—not what is—you should question whether it's accurate. Here, the premise wasn't that the siege lasted 10 years, but rather that the Iliad said it lasted 10 years.

Note that this isn't questioning a premise—the premise states that the Iliad claims the siege lasted 10 years, and we 100% agree that's what the Iliad claims. Instead, we're questioning whether that claim in the premise is true, not the premise itself.