PrepTest 122, Section 4, Question 10

What we’re looking for

Working the answers

• A

  This is tempting because it connects the creator's emotion with what the artwork expresses. But read the requirement carefully: actually experiencing an emotion isn't the same as being capable of experiencing it. The passage requires the ability, not a history of having felt it. A creator could have the capacity for sorrow without having experienced sorrow yet. The passage doesn't rule out that creator expressing sorrow, while A does. The mention of a computer isn't itself the problem; the changed requirement is.

• B

  We have conditions for being great, not a ranking of greatness. Nothing says deeper feelings produce greater art or that the people who feel most deeply make the greatest works. B turns a requirement into a scale on which more emotion supposedly means better art.

• C

  Return to the child's finger painting. It might express a deep emotion and still fail to be great. The passage says great art needs emotional expression; C says emotional expression is enough to make art great. The second claim doesn't follow from the first.

• D
  Correct

  A computer incapable of experiencing emotions can't satisfy the requirement we identified. It cannot create an artwork expressing a deep emotion, and without that expression the artwork cannot be great. D applies the two linked requirements to computers with that limitation. We don't have to decide whether all computers actually have the limitation; the answer tells us which computers it concerns.

• E

  The passage describes great artworks, not great artists. It gives us no rule saying every work produced by a great artist must express deep emotion. A great artist could produce an ordinary work, and an otherwise ordinary artist might produce one great work. E shifts the description from the work to its creator.