#6 - People who listen to certain recordings of music are

[Makar]

Hello David,

I do not understand how this question is a must be true question and how the correct answer, D, is correct. Nowhere in the stimulus does it say anything about music having to be comprehended and so it seems like new information is being used from the answer choices which is not supposed to happen in must be true questions. Thanks

[Robert Carroll]

Makar,

Because the question is asking for a consequence of the stimulus, the correct answer will be something that follows from the information in the stimulus. This is simply another way of stating a Must Be True question, where, in general, the correct answer choice is something that can be inferred from the information in the stimulus.

Note that answer choice (D) is conditional in nature. It's not making an isolated statement, but making a conditional statement. It says something like "If influence requires comprehension, then there is comprehension." Well, the stimulus claims that there IS influence. Then anything required by influence would be entailed by the stimulus. The answer is not saying that comprehension IS required. It's simply saying that any necessary condition of influence is itself necessary. If comprehension is such a necessary condition of influence, then comprehension is necessary itself.

The conditional form of the answer choice allows it to introduce seemingly new information in a way that's logically valid. There really is nothing new in the answer. If the answer were more general, like "If influence requires a certain condition, then that condition itself must be true," that would have been entailed by the stimulus as well. Making that "certain condition" concrete does not change the basic form of the statement.

Robert Carroll