#9 - Columnist: Video games are not works of art. No matter

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Justify the Conclusion. The correct answer choice is (B).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D):

Answer choice (E):

This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[sbieber1221]

I'm having some trouble with answer choice D. I chose it because I assumed that video game players that also created the video game would be able to control the aesthetic experience of the game because of the interactive component. Thus, for the argument to make sense, we could not have video game players that are also video game creators because then video games would be a work of art.

[Francis O'Rourke]

Hi Sbieber,

It looks like you were looking for a necessary assumption for this argument. However, this question is asking us to justify the conclusion; it tells us to look for the answer choice that would allow the argument to be properly drawn.

Remember that question stems that use the word "assume" are not automatically asking you to find a necessary assumption.

[Juanq42]

Hi!

For the questions I got wrong on this practice test or guessed correctly, I am returning to reassess my understanding.

For this justify question, I was able to decipher some conditional reasoning from the stimulus.

Premise 1: This might be a stretch... but when I read "No matter how rich the aesthetic experience produced by a video game might be, it is interactive" I considered that no matter what the aesthetic experience, it must be interactive. So,

Aesthetic interactive

Preimise 2: I realize now that there seems to be a distinction between interactiveness of an aesthetic experience and that controlled by an artist/creator.

Art Aesthetic controlled* by artist/creator

Conclusion: (first sentence) Video game NOT Art

Does B properly justify the conclusion by creating a double not arrow between interactive and controlled?

interactive controlled

If interactive then NOT controlled, which would create the contrapositive -

NOT controlled* by artist/creator NOT Aesthetic NOT Art

Or if controlled then NOT interactive, but this does not "guarantee" that the aesthetic experience is art since it is necessary?

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Juanq42,

You want to make sure you aren't making conditional statements that aren't supported by the stimulus. Your first premise isn't supported because the stimulus doesn't say that everything that is aesthetic is interactive. It does say that some video games are aesthetically rich. It does not say that all aesthetically rich things are interactive.

To set this up conditionally, you would have the following:

Premise: Video game interactive

Premise: art aesthetic experience controlled by the artist/creator

Conclusion: Video games are not art.

What are we looking for? We need to connect video games to not art. We could do this in a couple of ways. To get to "not art" we could:

1) interactive not art

2) interactive aesthetic experience not controlled by artist/creator

For the second option, to get to "not art" we have to take the contrapositive of the second premise:

Aesthetic experience not controlled by artist/creator not art

Our correct answer choice (B) says that interactive aesthetic experience not controlled by artist/creator. We know that video games are interactive, which means we know that their aesthetic experience is not controlled by artist/creator. From our contrapositive about, we know that makes video games not art.

Hope that helps!
Rachael