Q22 - People often praise poems for their truth.

[pobs]

I had a bit of trouble with this question as I couldn't divide the lines in the stimulus into the roles that they play in argument. During the PT, due to time pressure i coloured in A as the answer but after reviewing i still couldn't understand the role that the past sentence played. Would anyone be able to lay out what makes B the right answer?

[christine.defenbaugh]

Thanks for posting, pobs!

First, you were right on track in trying to sort out the argument core first, before heading to the answer choices. So let's tackle that now!

The first sentence sounds a lot like a counterargument that the author is setting up to take down - anytime we see the language 'people often think blah blah blah' or 'some people have claimed that blah blah blah', we should be on the lookout for the author to tell us that those people are stupid and wrong!

And we get that reversal in the very next sentence, which basically says those people are misguided! Either this is the conclusion, and we're about to follow it up with some support for why we think they're misguided, or we're going to use the fact that they are misguided as a premise to support something new.

The next two sentences are giving us some back-up for why those people are misguided! Why is it misguided for think that truth makes poems awesome? Because truth is common, and the thing that makes a poem awesome should be rare!

So, the core ultimately looks like this:

PREMISES:
1) Most commonplace beliefs are true
2) The thing that makes a poem excellent must be rare
CONCLUSION: It's misguided to think that truth makes poems excellent, or of merit.

So, that last sentence is a premise supporting the conclusion - but it's not the only premise, it's one of two. And that's precisely what (B) gives us.

Let's take a quick look at the wrong answers here:

(A) The conclusion was that those people are misguided!
(C) This IS support, but it's not the only support.
(D) This statement isn't background, it absolutely impacts the conclusion.
(E) The author never explains why the thing that makes poems awesome needs to be rare - he just says it. The only thing the author tries to explain is why people are misguided.

Does that help clear things up a bit?

[seychelles1718]

In LSAT, Does "proposition" mean premise or can it also refer to a claim/conclusion?

Also, what argument role does E describe? Does it refer to a premise?

[ohthatpatrick]

Proposition / claim / contention = A sentence (usually said by someone).

Those could play any role. They're just generic nouns for "a sentence".

It's kinda ambiguous what (E) describes.

"explanation" = can mean a causal explanation, in which case (E) would describe the CURIOUS FACT that leads an author to (overconfidently) conclude an explanation for / interpretation of.

"explanation" = can mean supporting ideas, in which case (E) would describe a CONCLUSION, for which the argument provides support.

We'd need context to figure out which sense of explanation we're talking about.

In this context, it feels more like the 2nd case.

We wouldn't offer a CAUSAL explanation for the last sentence. We'd offer SUPPORTING REASONS for why this last sentence is the case.

So, it sounds like it's calling it a conclusion here.