All unemployed artists are sympathetic to social justice. And no employed artists are interested in the prospect of g...

amandapaige on February 24, 2019

I got E and also don't understand how the answer is A?

Ravi on February 26, 2019

@Anna and @amandapaige,

Happy to help.

Let's go over the stimulus before looking at the answer choices.

We can diagram the stimulus:

unemployed artists - >sympathetic to social justice

employed artist - >not interested in the prospect of great personal fame

It helps to take the contrapositive of the second statement so that we
have 'unemployed artist' in both statements

unemployed artists - >sympathetic to social justice

interested in the prospect of great personal fame - >unemployed artist

We can link these up to form

interested in the prospect of great personal fame - >unemployed
artist - >sympathetic to social justice

We know that if someone is interested in the prospect of great
personal fame, they must be sympathetic to social justice

The question asks, "If the claims made above are true, then which one
of the following must be true?"

Based on what we've already figured out, we can be almost certain that
the answer will be that if someone is interested in the prospect of
great personal fame, they must be sympathetic to social justice or its
contrapositive.

@amandapaige, you said you picked (E).

(E) says, "All artists are either sympathetic to social justice or are
interested in the prospect of great personal fame."

(E) does not have to be true based on the stimulus. We know that
employed artists don't care about personal fame, and there is the
possibility that they also do not care or are sympathetic to social
justice. Remember, the chain from the stimulus is

interested in the prospect of great personal fame - >unemployed
artist - >sympathetic to social justice

If we take its contrapositive, we have

not sympathetic to social justice - >employed artist - >not interested
in the prospect of great personal fame.

The contrapositive clearly shows that it's possible for an artist not
to neither care about social justice or have an interest in personal
fame, so (E) doesn't have to be true. We can get rid of this choice.

(A) says, "If there are artists interested in the prospect of great
personal fame, they are sympathetic to social justice."

(A) is precisely what our anticipation was. Our chain is

interested in the prospect of great personal fame - >unemployed
artist - >sympathetic to social justice

This triggers the sufficient condition and concludes the necessary
condition of the chain we built from the stimulus, so this is the what
must be true and is also the correct answer.

Does this make sense? Let us know if you have any more questions!