PrepTest 112, Section 4, Question 25
The judgment that an artist is great always(60 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(11 more words not shown)
- AThe only way(45 more words not shown)
- BAlthough colds are(30 more words not shown)
- CSomeone who has(50 more words not shown)
- DThe viruses that(35 more words not shown)
- EUnless a person(42 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
No basis at all? If I've seen ten excellent paintings by an artist, surely that tells me something about what else the artist might produce. It doesn't guarantee the next painting will be excellent. But the argument goes much further than denying a guarantee. It says the artist's greatness provides no basis for predicting the quality of unknown or future work. That throws away the possible value of what we've already seen.
Follow how the author gets there. We judge greatness by the artist's work. The author then treats “great artist” as merely a summary of the known work, and uses that description to rule out any predictive value. Why should a judgment based on past evidence be useless for making a prediction? The fact that it comes from the known works doesn't establish that it tells us nothing about other works.
What we’re looking for
For a parallel-flaw question, I want that sequence in view before the choices start pulling me toward similar-sounding conclusions: we observe evidence, make a judgment from it, reduce that judgment to a description of the observations, then dismiss its ability to predict anything further. The central mistake is treating potentially useful evidence as entirely useless for prediction.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
Observed symptoms take the place of known works of art. Saying the patient has a cold takes the place of saying the artist is great. Each judgment is based on what we've observed.
Then comes the same move: the judgment is treated as only a summary of those observations. From there, A declares that no prediction about future symptoms is justified, just as the original denies any basis for predicting future work. Neither argument establishes why a judgment drawn from observed evidence can't tell us something about what comes next. The pieces match in both their roles and their order.
- B
This starts with a difference between groups: some people get colds much less often than others. It concludes that a physiological difference must explain that pattern. That is an inference about the cause of an observed difference. It doesn't reduce a judgment to a summary of observations and then reject its predictive value.
- C
The ending is tempting: past history supposedly can't predict the future. But the reason is different. C relies on a person being unable to catch the same virus twice and there being indefinitely many other viruses. Those claims about repeated infection and new possibilities have no matching role in the artist argument. A similar conclusion isn't enough when the reasoning used to reach it changes.
- D
Again, the conclusion concerns an inability to predict. Here, though, the reason is that different viruses have different effects. The argument appeals to variation among causes to question our ability to predict a cold's course. It doesn't say a diagnosis is merely a summary of observed symptoms and therefore has no predictive value. That missing move matters.
- E
This questions whether we can be certain of the diagnosis at all, because the same symptoms can indicate different diseases. The artist argument accepts the judgment that an artist is great and attacks its usefulness for predicting other work. E instead attacks confidence in the present judgment. It also introduces competing explanations for the same evidence, which the original doesn't do.
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