Critical Reasoning

Beauty is subjective. What is beautiful to one person is not always beautiful to someone else. Consider a performance of any piece of serious contemporary music. Some members of the audience discover in it subtle and delightful patterns, which they find beautiful. Others hear arbitrary and discordant sounds, which they find ugly.

Which of the following statements, if true, would most weaken the argument above?

No current controversy exists over the beauty of certain lost works of art that are now unknown.

Performances of serious contemporary music often vary considerably in quality.

Those who fail to find performances of serious contemporary music beautiful disagree among themselves about what is beautiful.

Those who find performances of serious contemporary music beautiful never like them as much as they like performances of older music.

Some performances of older classical music have been found beautiful by all who heard them.

IMO:E from POE

IMO (C)

The definition of beauty is questioned by those who find the piece of music ugly.

I like E more than A, though I want to believe that A is completely wrong.

Any experts want to comment on this?

i like E too

OA ? is it C .

options
A-not related
B-strengthen's by saying contemporary vary in quality
D-not related
E-i dont know how to go about with negation so stuck with C

IMO E

gmatblood wrote:Beauty is subjective. What is beautiful to one person is not always beautiful to someone else. Consider a performance of any piece of serious contemporary music. Some members of the audience discover in it subtle and delightful patterns, which they find beautiful. Others hear arbitrary and discordant sounds, which they find ugly.

Which of the following statements, if true, would most weaken the argument above?

No current controversy exists over the beauty of certain lost works of art that are now unknown.

Performances of serious contemporary music often vary considerably in quality.

Those who fail to find performances of serious contemporary music beautiful disagree among themselves about what is beautiful.

Those who find performances of serious contemporary music beautiful never like them as much as they like performances of older music.

Some performances of older classical music have been found beautiful by all who heard them.

A) out of scope
B) Weakens. My explanation: the argument says that What is beautiful to one person is not always beautiful to someone else. Consider a performance of any piece of serious contemporary music. Some members of the audience discover in it subtle and delightful patterns, which they find beautiful. Others hear arbitrary and discordant sounds, which they find ugly. In this, it is assumed that the quality of music or anything under consideration is equal and it is only a matter of how someone else sees it. So if we say that the quality of the thing under consideration is not equal or similar then it definitely weakens the whole arguement.
C) out of scope
D) out of scope
E) out of scope

gmatblood wrote:Beauty is subjective. What is beautiful to one person is not always beautiful to someone else. Consider a performance of any piece of serious contemporary music. Some members of the audience discover in it subtle and delightful patterns, which they find beautiful. Others hear arbitrary and discordant sounds, which they find ugly.

Which of the following statements, if true, would most weaken the argument above?

No current controversy exists over the beauty of certain lost works of art that are now unknown.

Performances of serious contemporary music often vary considerably in quality.

Those who fail to find performances of serious contemporary music beautiful disagree among themselves about what is beautiful.

Those who find performances of serious contemporary music beautiful never like them as much as they like performances of older music.

Some performances of older classical music have been found beautiful by all who heard them.

I'm going with E... blood, what's the oa and source please?

IMO[spoiler](C).[/spoiler]

A - Does not weaken the argument.
B - if performances vary in quality. But some people consider this music as ugly because of it's subtle and delightful patterns which has nothing to do with quality. Hence B does not weaken the conclusion
C - The people who don't consider this music beautiful disagree amongst themseleves. This shakes the basis of the entire reasoning and hence can be considered as an argument that weakens the passage.
D- OOS
E - OOS

Regards
Nitin

anyone knows the answer to this question?

i will go with E.

Let me throw in my take on the question as well:

Beauty is subjective. What is beautiful to one person is not always beautiful to someone else. Consider a performance of any piece of serious contemporary music. Some members of the audience discover in it subtle and delightful patterns, which they find beautiful. Others hear arbitrary and discordant sounds, which they find ugly.

Which of the following statements, if true, would most weaken the argument above?

No current controversy exists over the beauty of certain lost works of art that are now unknown.

Performances of serious contemporary music often vary considerably in quality.

Those who fail to find performances of serious contemporary music beautiful disagree among themselves about what is beautiful.

Those who find performances of serious contemporary music beautiful never like them as much as they like performances of older music.

Some performances of older classical music have been found beautiful by all who heard them.

The question ask us to find the option which weakens the argument... Which argument is being referred here? The argument that "Beauty is subjective". We have to find a choice which clearly shows that beauty is not subjective or not dependent on individuals' choices but rather something which can be generalized and which is universal.

Going by the options:

A-- This talks about controversy which is out of context. This is not correct.
B---If music varies in quality, this does not affect its subjectivity. This is incorrect.
C---People may disagree about beauty but this again does not show beauty as not being subjective. If anything, this hints at beauty being subjective, which is the opposite of what we want.
D--- Out of context and totally irrelevant.
E--- If this is true and everyone likes a particular music piece, then this may show that beauty is not subjective but universal in nature. This is the option we are looking for. Correct choice!

Hope this is the answer as well.

Answer is B.
Also, to verify, if I negate B, it would say that
the quality of music is same all the time, and thus would strengthen the argument because then only perception of beauty would explain the difference in opinions.
hence negating B strengthens the argument.
Thus B is a weakener for sure.
A:Talking about things which are not mentioned in the passage ,plus uses words such as lost, uknown etc making it a suspect choice.
B:Correct
C:This strengthens the argument. If they are struggling among themselves, this means that they are definitely finding the topic subjective and are hence not able to come to a conclusion
D:Irrelevant comparison
E:Some performances,older music etc are keywords that make it a wrong choice.

gmatblood wrote:Beauty is subjective. What is beautiful to one person is not always beautiful to someone else. Consider a performance of any piece of serious contemporary music. Some members of the audience discover in it subtle and delightful patterns, which they find beautiful. Others hear arbitrary and discordant sounds, which they find ugly.

Which of the following statements, if true, would most weaken the argument above?

No current controversy exists over the beauty of certain lost works of art that are now unknown.

Performances of serious contemporary music often vary considerably in quality.

Those who fail to find performances of serious contemporary music beautiful disagree among themselves about what is beautiful.

Those who find performances of serious contemporary music beautiful never like them as much as they like performances of older music.

Some performances of older classical music have been found beautiful by all who heard them.

This CR exhibits a common flaw: a SHIFT IN SCOPE.

The premise is about ONE example: Consider A PERFORMANCE of any piece of serious contemporary music.
The conclusion is about ALL: BEAUTY is subjective.
The assumption is that what is true for ONE is true for ALL.

Answer choice E: Some performances of older classical music have been found beautiful by ALL who heard them.
This answer choice offers a COUNTEREXAMPLE that weakens the conclusion. If there are performances that have been found beautiful by ALL who heard them, then the conclusion that what is beautiful to one person is not always beautiful to someone else -- that beauty is SUBJECTIVE -- is weakened.

The correct answer is E.

Reasons to eliminate B and C:

B: Performances of serious contemporary music often vary considerably in quality.
Out of scope. The conclusion is not about QUALITY but about BEAUTY. Regardless, this answer choice implies that any given performance could be of HIGH quality or of LOW quality and does not dispute that some audience members will find the performance beautiful while others find it ugly. Thus, the conclusion that beauty is subjective is not weakened.

C: Those who fail to find performances of serious contemporary music beautiful disagree among themselves about what is beautiful.
Since these people disagree about what is beautiful, the conclusion that beauty is SUBJECTIVE is STRENGTHENED.

ronnie1985 wrote:IMO (C)

The definition of beauty is questioned by those who find the piece of music ugly.

same above explanation was give in the previous post which was 15 days back here, and answer was C, but nw it seems E..!!