The authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey has long been debated. Some traditional evidence suggests that Homer crea...

shunhe on April 14, 2020

Hi @jingjingxiao11111@gmail.com,

Thanks for the question! So first, let’s take a look at the stimulus. We’re told that the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey has been debated. Traditional evidence suggests Homer created both or large portions of each, but there’s also evidence that’s equally as good that suggests Homer didn’t have anything to do with either. The author concludes that since the evidence on each side is about the same, we should stick with tradition.

Now we’re asked for a principle that underlies the decision. Let’s take a look at what (C) says. (C) tells us that if there is no overwhelming evidence for or against a hypothesis, one should believe it. But is this the principle being used? Whatever principle we choose has to have something to do with erring on the side of tradition. Notice that (C) can be equally applied to the other argument that Homer had nothing to do with either. That argument also has no overwhelming evidence for or against it, and so following this principle could also lead us to accept this hypothesis. But the author doesn’t say that, and so we can eliminate (C).

Notice that the correct answer (B) includes this factor of tradition. (B) has us decide on the tradition argument and cannot be equally applied to the other argument.

Hope this helps. Feel free to ask any further questions that you might have.

lklop on May 29, 2021

what about (D) then?

jingjingxiao11111@gmail.com on June 30, 2021

I am not an instructor so please feel free to correct me.

D states that (D: One should accept the authority of tradition only if one has nontraditional evidence for the traditional hypothesis.). This is wrong because it goes against what happened in the argument.

What happened in the argument is that the author specifically wants us to believe the verdict of tradition (that is, accepting that Homer is the author of both works) since there is no overwhelming evidence for or against the traditional hypothesis that he is the author of both works.

D wants us to accept the authority of tradition only if one has nontraditional evidence for the traditional hypothesis. Since the argument stated already that there is no nontraditional evidence for the tradition hypothesis, as no evidence has been found for or against the hypothesis, D is incorrect.

If it helps, please think of this way. D is incorrect because the condition in the “only if” clause in D is not met (that is, we don’t have any nontraditional evidence for the traditional hypothesis that Homer is the author of both works. Yet we are forced to believe that Homer is the author of both works despite the lack of evidence). Since the conclusion of D rests on the premise introduced in the “only if” clause, D cannot be correct.

I hope this helps. Thank you.