#5 - The high cost of production is severely limiting which

[Adam Tyson]

Some of your diagram is not accurate, imho, Yusra. For example, the first claim, that high cost is severely limiting choice, is causal, not conditional. Further, it is not the limited choices that require corporate sponsors, but the high costs that do that, and it is the corporate sponsors that are limiting choice. So it's more like this:

Premises: High Cost Large Corp Sponsors Most Famous Operas
Sub-Conclusion: High Costs cause Limited Choice

New Statement of Opinion that is neither a premise nor a conclusion (because there is no evidence to support it, and it supports nothing): ticket purchasers should decide, not sponsors (and there is nothing conditional about that claim- it's just the author's opinion about what should be the case.) This isn't part of the argument so much as it is a statement that explains why the author is making this argument. It's just his motive.

Conclusion (based on the premises and sub-conclusion above): Reduce Budgets Less Famous Operas

(And this is based on the idea that if we remove the cause of Limited Choice, we will also reduce that effect - it's a conditional claim based on a causal argument, which was itself based on conditional premises. What a tangled web they wove!)

Perhaps you can see why in our original explanation we glossed over the conditional aspects and just took a more holistic approach to trying to understand who this author was and what they wanted to prove?

[Rosepose24]

I considered this a CONDITIONAL X weaken question from the bible chapter because the argument relied on the conditional statement in the conclusion.

box office supported --> less famous operas possible

I prephased an answer that should show that the sufficient can occur and the necessary does not.. necessarily follow.

So with C, (no corporate support aka) box office supported --> less famous operas NOT possible. This separates the relationship (S-->N) that the argument relies on, weakening it.

Is this the most direct /correct way to go about it? Or am I approaching this incompletely?

Also, when trying to think of the scenario... I figured with the corporate support there is the financial ability to produce famous or non famous ones. Maybe famous ones are cheaper (bulk/ reused costumes and sets) and Non famous ones cost more to produce because original sets, never been done before effects, lighting etc are required (whatever it may be). So even with the option to do both, the corporate sponsors prefer the famous ones (better R.O.I/ cheaper cost to them, more views and ticket sales). BUT the box office sales and individual donors alone, only bring in enough to cover the cheaper of the two which is famous ones... so you can not do original productions. Whereas at least the option for both was possible with corporate help.

[Ryan Twomey]

Hey Rosepose,

That is a correct way of looking at it. This was one of those weaken questions with a number of conclusion type statements that you could weaken.

Your pre-phrase was absolutely correct, but one thing I would say is that your pre-phrase answer choice will not always be there, so be prepared to evaluate other answer choices in case there was a possibility that you missed in the argument. Especially on recent tests, we are seeing stimuluses with multiple flaws and assumptions so there are often multiple pre-phrases that you could come up with for a correct answer. I think it's really important to pre-phrase but also, like I said, make sure you consider every answer choice and what it does to the stimulus.

But going back to your original reasoning, yes this answer choice weakens the stimulus because it shows the sufficient condition happening and then the necessary condition not happening, which is how we weaken conditional statements.

You're doing a great job, and continue posting and studying, and I wish you all of the luck in your studies.

Best,
Ryan