Q12 - The Discourses, a work attributed to the

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Strengthen

Stimulus Breakdown:
Conclusion: It's highy unlikely that A wrote "The Disc" and then lied and said that E wrote it.
Evidence: E's views were well known by others, so if A tried to pass off his views as E's, people would've caught on to the deception.

Answer Anticipation:
Even though we're ultimately strengthening, we need to figure out what's being assumed or how we might object to this.

My first objection was "Why would the deception be discovered? What if A's views are super close to E's views? Or what if A wrote it in a way that represented E's views, rather than his own?"

The author seems to be assuming that A and E had distinct views AND that A would have chosen to represent his own views even while passing them off as E's. I would look for something to that effect, or any other answer that helped to persuade me that A was not writing "The Disc" and passing it off as E's work.

Correct Answer:
D

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) If anything this weakens. This establishes a motive for A to write a work but then pretend it was written by E.

(B) "Some" is super low-impact, so I barely even read past that. This drifts towards weakening, though, since our author believes there is a noticeable difference between A's views and E's views. And this aligns with the idea that A did write "The Disc".

(C) This weakens, since it increases the plausibility that A also chose to write a work and lie about the author.

(D) YES. This strengthens, since it helps to persuade us that A would not write a work and then pass it off as E's.

(E) Cool! What was his favorite vegetable? Oh, wait, I don't care about any of this.

Takeaway/Pattern: The correct answer tests "a gap" I wouldn't have expected. The author's argument is, "Had A tried to pass off his work as E's, the deception would have been exposed. Thus, A probably didn't try to pass off his work as E's." So the missing link between the last two ideas is "If the deception would be discovered, then A probably wouldn't do it". (D) helps provide some connective tissue there. Someone may have objected, "So what if the deception would be discovered? Maybe A didn't care about that and chose to do it anyway!" But (D) is saying, "Oh, A would have definitely cared about whether the deception would have been discovered."

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