PrepTest 117, Section 4, Question 19

What we’re looking for

Working the answers

• A

  This starts with a way to earn admiration: put the interests of those you serve above your own. It then describes politicians who supposedly do that. Whatever questions we might have about whose interests count, this isn't an argument with two separate requirements for membership in one group. There is no jump from meeting one such requirement to meeting the other.

• B
  Correct

  Jazz musicians fill the role of governments worthy of respect. Improvising fills the role of allowing dissent. Reading music fills the role of protecting minorities.

  The premises say every jazz musician can do both. The conclusion then says anyone who can read music can improvise. But a musician could read music without improvising, just as a government could protect minorities without allowing dissent. In both arguments, the two features go together within the specified group; that doesn't establish that they always go together outside it.

• C

  Here the premises form a chain: a cool, dry climate means large mammals, and large mammals mean no abundant and varied plant life. The conclusion makes an unsupported claim about ecosystems without the starting climate. That's flawed, but it's a different mistake. We don't have two requirements for one group followed by a claim that one requirement guarantees the other.

• D

  The first premise tells us only about some intellectuals. The second separates intellectuals from professional athletes. Neither tells us how socially active athletes are, so the conclusion is unsupported. But the original gives two rules covering every member of the same group; this answer doesn't reproduce that structure.

• E

  First-person narration conceals other characters' thoughts, while some third-person narration reveals everyone's motives. The argument uses that contrast to recommend third-person narration for a story that needs everyone's motives apparent. It rules out one narration option based on what that option conceals. It doesn't infer that possessing one feature shared by a group guarantees possessing another feature of that group.