Question 24 - Section IV of June 1991

@LH44, Happy to help. The stimulus can be diagrammed as 1) Contemporary Advertising - >Persuasion 2) Contemporary Advertising-some-Morally Reprehensible 3) Persuasion-some-Morally Reprehensible The basic structure of the argument in the stimulus is to combine a conditional statement with a quantifier (some) to arrive at the conclusion. This is a valid argument, and we're looking for the answer that most closely parallels this form. You said you thought both (C) and (E) were correct. Let's take a look. (C) says, "A good manager always makes important decisions on the basis of adequate data, although of course some managers fail to do this. It follows that some managers are not good managers." In diagramming (C), we have 1) Good Manager - >Adequate Data 2) Manager-some-Not Adequate Data 3) Manager-some-Not Good Manager Like the stimulus, this argument is also valid. However, unlike the stimulus, this argument is using the contrapositive of its first premise in order to arrive at its conclusion. The argument we analyzed in the stimulus does not use a contrapositive, let alone one from its first premise, so the reasoning is different. From this, we can get rid of (C). (E) says, "Some short poems are thematically pluralistic, since some sonnets are characterized by such pluralism, and all sonnets are short poems." The first statement in (E) is actually its conclusion. Diagramming (E) we have Sonnets - >Short Poems Sonnets-some-Thematically Pluralistic Short Poems-some-Thematically Pluralistic In combining the third statement of (E) with its second statement, we arrive at the conclusion that some short poems are thematically pluralistic. Just as we saw in the stimulus, the basic structure of this argument is to combine a conditional statement with a quantifier (some) to arrive at the conclusion. Like the stimulus, this argument is also valid. This argument has the same kind of combination that we found in the stimulus, so it's the correct answer choice. Does this make sense? Do you see why (E) is correct and (C) is incorrect? Let us know if you have any more questions!