#20 - Recently discovered prehistoric rock paintings

[martinbeslu]

I don't understand how answer choice D is not attempting to deny the premise (and failing at it). The stimulus tells us that painters must have needed to eat the sea animals if they were to make the long journey to and from the islands. We must accept this as true so wouldn't the fact that they had advanced techniques of preserving meat tell us nothing relevant? How is this any different than saying that they had the technology to make canned soda and bring that on their trips too?

[Adam Tyson]

On a weaken question, martinbeslu, we do NOT have to accept the premises as true! The stem certainly doesn't tell us that we have to do that, so we do not. While most of the time we will want to look not at the premises but at the gap between the premises and the conclusion, we do sometimes question them in a weaken question and support them in a strengthen question. This is especially the case when we are faced with an EXCEPT variant of one of those types of questions, because we need four wrong answers that DO weaken or strengthen the argument, and there may not be four different ways to attack or support that gap. So, in addition to attacking the gap here, as we do with answers A and B, we can also attack the premises, which we do with answers D and E (because they both attack the claim that the painters must have eaten sea animals).

That rule about accepting the premises as true applies to most question types that are in the first family of questions, the "Prove" family - Must Be True, Main Point, Method of Reasoning, Flaw in the Reasoning, Point at Issue, Point of Agreement - and Resolve the Paradox questions from the second family, the "Help" family. We also do that with Cannot Be True questions. It's when we are asked to weaken or strengthen that we are okay with questioning a premise.

Also, remember that "weaken" does not mean "disprove", but only "raise some doubt." The meat preservation answer doesn't prove the argument is wrong, but it does raise some doubt about their need to eat sea animals while they traveled back and forth, right? Maybe they lived on moose jerky instead?

Don't be too rigid in your application of the concepts and strategies, and be aware of when a certain technique applies and when it does not. Keep at it!

[lilmissunshine]

Hello,

Could you explain why (C) does not weaken the argument? I was debating between (C) and (D) and ended up choosing (D). I thought paintings depicting many land animals indirectly show the inhabitants' diet of land animals (which is similar to answer (E)).

Thank you very much!

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi, LMS,

To determine what does and doesn't weaken the argument, let's focus first on the conclusion:

• The theory that the cave paintings depict the diet of the painters cannot be right.

Now why does the author think this? The author thinks these paintings cannot depict the diet of the painters because according to the author

• the painters would have needed to eat sea animals to survive the long sea journey AND
• there are no unambiguous paintings of sea animals

Next, ask yourself what it would mean to weaken this argument. To weaken this argument we'd need to find evidence that even though there are no unambiguous paintings of sea animals and even though the painters would have needed to eat sea animals to survive the long sea journey, it might be possible that the theory that the cave paintings depict the diet of the painters is right.

In effect, answer choice (C) mostly reiterates information we already know from the stimulus. From the stimulus, we know the paintings don't depict sea animals. If an answer tells us the paintings do depict land animals, this information does not address the gap in the reasoning between the information in the premises and the information in the conclusion. The information in answer choice (C) is at least consistent with the author's reasoning: the paintings are of land animals; the painters would have had to eat sea creatures to survive; therefore, the paintings cannot depict the painters' diet.

On the other hand, answer choice (D) contests the veracity of the author's first premise. If the painters had advanced meat preservation techniques, they might not have needed to eat the sea animals to survive the long journey, therefore it might be possible that the theory that the cave paintings depict the diet of the painters is right.

Thus (D) does in fact weaken the argument.

I hope this helps!

[lilmissunshine]

Thank you so much Jonathan! Your explanation was very helpful!

[Sambenz]

I ended up choosing D over C on this question. I understand why C is correct over D after seeing the answers above. However, with this question I found it really hard to connect the different elements of the stimulus while also juggling my task of disproving the author's criticism of the theory for each answer choice. I ended up choosing the answer that didn't appear relevant, namely, D. When you encounter questions like this, what should you do?

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Sambenz,

In general, the best thing you can do for yourself on a Weaken question is to identify and isolate the premises and conclusion, then assess any areas of weakness in the argument (did the author tell you everything you need to know; is the conclusion too strong; etc.).

Here the conclusion is that "this theory cannot be right," but if all you do is restate that phrase to yourself, you're making your task harder than it should be. Tell me what the opposite of the theory is, because that's what the author is actually committing to! In this case, the real meat (no pun intended) of the conclusion is: "Northern cave paintings were NOT largely a description of the current diets of the painters."

What reasons has the author given us to think that those paintings were NOT describing diets?
1. The painters would've needed to eat some sea animals to get to and from the islands; AND
2. There are no paintings that "unambiguously depict" sea animals.

I can think of a couple problems here.
1. Just because sea animals were eaten by the painters doesn't mean they didn't eat other things that the paintings could've depicted (Aha! Answer choices A and E plug into this problem.)
2. How do we know that we've found all the cave paintings that the prehistoric people made (maybe a bunch of others haven't been found that would tilt the evidence toward the "diet" theory)? (Aha! Answer choice B plugs into this problem.)
3. Maybe the painters really didn't need to eat sea animals at all, for some reason I haven't thought of (Aha! answer choice D plugs into this problem by suggesting the painters could've preserved meats for their journey.)

Don't expect perfection from yourself in thinking up all the problems associated with an argument in a Weaken question. Keep an open mind to things you hadn't thought of, but always focus in every answer on whether that information really impacts the conclusion. Remember, the conclusion is all about the diet of the painters, and if you're down to answers C and D, go with the one that has the clearest connection to diet. Answer choice D discusses "meat" (a diet thing) whereas answer choice C just discusses animals (without telling us whether the painters or prehistoric humans actually ate those animals). That's all you can do at the end of the day to ensure you don't "miss" something in the answers.

I hope this helps!

Jeremy

[ashpine17]

So I have trouble distinguishing between assumptions that are warranted and those that are not and are beyond the scope of the passage. I'm assuming the answer that talks about the people having advanced techniques of preserving food is relevant because it is supposed to suggest that the people didn't need to hunt ocean animals to sustain themselves during the journey and so they weren't on the cave paintings...but how is that not an unwarranted assumption? Or if all that I'm saying is wrong, could someone point out why?

[Robert Carroll]

ashpine,

Because this is a Weaken EXCEPT question, we're expecting every wrong answer to have 1. new information that 2. we trust ("if true") that 3. weakens the argument. So, does answer choice (D) present information that makes the conclusion less likely to be true? Of course it does - as you point out, those people could preserve food and thus have less need to eat on the way. Is it necessarily true that they did not? Nope. But it's never a standard of a Weaken answer that it has to disprove the conclusion. So answer choice (D) makes it less likely that the people needed to eat sea animals on the way. That weakens the conclusion, so that answer choice is incorrect.

Robert Carroll

[flowskiferda]

I heavily considered C, but ultimately chose B over it. Here is my reasoning–for C to weaken, it must be the case that, somehow, all of the content that the paintings were LARGELY of somehow vanished, only leaving the minority of paintings that weren’t of such content. This would be an extraordinary coincidence, and we would have to assume it to be the case for B to work.

C, on the other hand, requires much less of an assumption. If it is the case that the paintings primarily depicted land animals, then it could be the case that those are what the painters ate at the time of the painting. After all, the stimulus says they painted what they CURRENTLY ate, not what they ate on their way to the island.

Where did I go wrong?