LR Question 23 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Film preservation requires transferring old movies…
QUESTION TYPE: Necessary Assumption
CONCLUSION: Some early Hollywood films won’t be preserved.
REASONING: We can’t transfer all films from their original material to acetate.
ANALYSIS: This argument makes a whole-to-part flaw. It’s true that we can’t save all films. But that doesn’t mean we can’t save all old Hollywood films.
For example, we could focus on preserving old Hollywood films, and save those films. Or maybe they’ve already been preserved. The argument has to assume that neither of these two things is possible.
I’ve taken a bit of liberty on negations. Most people try to use a really technical grammatical approach. It works, but it’s not the best way to do it. With negations, you’re just trying to prove the idea false, in the least useful way possible. If you can imagine a situation where the answer is true, but the situation doesn’t hurt the argument, then the answer isn’t necessary.
___________
- This is a good example of how useless some assumptions are. If you negate this in the slightest way possible, it’s really, really useless.
Negation: One new technology will be developed in the year 2542. The technology won’t work. - The argument wasn’t even talking about cost.
Negation: There is one cheaper method. But it really sucks – it destroys 89% of the films it tries to preserve. - Close, but “many” is vague enough that this isn’t truly necessary. The negation doesn’t wreck the argument.
Negation: Many films have been transferred, but thousands remain. Too many to save. - CORRECT. The negation of this destroys the argument.
Negation: No early Hollywood films exist only in their original material. - This is just a random fact. We’re concerned with saving all early Hollywood films, so it doesn’t matter which ones are most likely to be lost. One is too many.
Recap: The question begins with “Film preservation requires transferring old movies”. It is a Necessary Assumption question. To practice more Necessary Assumption questions, have a look at the LSAT Questions by Type page.
I feel the more appropriate reasoning for why the AC is wrong would be that even if many have not been transferred to the Acetate form, they don’t necessarily have to be in their original Nitrate form either. Perhaps those films are in some other xyz format, which is not permanent like Acetate but nowhere as bad as Nitrate either. Hence, in such a case, it is possible that no films from the earliest years of Hollywood will be lost forever.
That’s also good reasoning. There are often multiple possibilities. When I said “preserved” I didn’t necessarily mean only nitrate.