PrepTest 112, Section 1, Question 21
Kostman's original painting of Rosati was not a(21 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(15 more words not shown)
- AGeorge's speech was(18 more words not shown)
- BAn artist who(23 more words not shown)
- CIf a child's(18 more words not shown)
- DJo imitated Layne.(15 more words not shown)
- EHarold's second novel(21 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
You can take a perfectly clear picture of a bad drawing.
Suppose I draw a boat that barely looks like a boat. You photograph my drawing, and the photograph captures every awkward line exactly. My drawing is a poor representation of the boat, but your photograph is an excellent representation of my drawing. Its job wasn't to fix my artwork.
That's the distinction the argument misses. Kostman's painting doesn't accurately represent Rosati. Your reproduction, however, is being judged against Kostman's painting. Copying its inaccuracies faithfully could make your reproduction accurate as a copy, even though it still wouldn't look much like Rosati.
What we’re looking for
We need another argument making the same mistake. I'd look for someone using a defect in the original material to dismiss the quality of a reproduction, without checking whether that reproduction captures its actual subject well. Keep asking: accurate or good in relation to what?
Working the answers
- ACorrect
George's speech misrepresents facts and quotations. But a recording could preserve his words clearly and accurately, including every half-truth and misquote. False content doesn't create bad sound quality.
The speech takes the place of Kostman's inaccurate portrait; the recording takes the place of the reproduction. Each argument wrongly transfers a problem with the original material into a different judgment about the quality of its copy. We don't need George to be reproducing another entire speech. The relevant distinction is between flawed content and a faithful reproduction of that content.
- B
This transfers ugliness from a scene to a painting of it. But it doesn't begin with an inaccurate representation and then judge whether a copy reproduces that representation well. A painting could portray an ugly scene beautifully; that would raise a question about aesthetic quality. Our argument instead confuses the accuracy of an original portrait with the accuracy of copying that portrait.
- C
Resembling someone doesn't mean matching every feature. The child's eyes might have the same shape as her mother's but a different color. That is a jump from general resemblance to one particular shared feature. It isn't an argument that a defect in something prevents a faithful reproduction of it.
- D
Jo doesn't have to be identical to Layne to imitate Layne well. An impersonator could have a different appearance or personality and still reproduce someone's mannerisms convincingly. D wrongly uses differences between the people to judge the imitation. It doesn't identify a flaw in the original material and transfer that flaw to the quality of a copy.
- E
Similar books might share a length or setting without being equally enthralling. A literary prize also doesn't, by itself, establish that the first novel is enthralling. Those are unsupported connections, but neither is the copy-quality mistake we're matching. The second novel is described as similar to the first, not as a reproduction judged inaccurate because its source was inaccurate.
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