censorship advocate’s rebuttal is flawed

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censorship advocate’s rebuttal is flawed

by pnk » Wed Jun 16, 2010 9:36 pm
LSAT

Civil libertarian: The categorical prohibition of any nonviolent means of expression inevitably poisons a society's intellectual atmosphere. Therefore, those advocating censorship of all potentially offensive art are pursuing a course that is harmful to society.
Censorship advocate: You're wrong, because many people are in agreement about what constitutes potentially offensive art.

The censorship advocate's rebuttal is flawed because it
(A) attempts to extract a general rule from a specific case
(B) extracts an erroneous principle from a commonly held belief
(C) attacks the civil libertarians character instead of the argument
(D) relies on an irrelevant reason for rejecting the civil libertarian's argument
(E) uses hyperbolic inflammatory language that obscures the issue at hand

[spoiler]OA: D.

C, E - not related; A - CA is not drawing any general rule from specific case (of offesive art). He is drawing rule for offensive art only -> out;

B: drawing principle (of censoring offensive art) from common belives of people about what offensive arts are. Its not erroneous

D: advocate believes what people's definition of offensive art (may be people think offensive arts are not good for society). How his reasoning is irrelevant.[/spoiler]
Pls help

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by albatross86 » Wed Jun 16, 2010 11:44 pm
CL : Censorship of potentially offensive art / non-violent expression is harmful to society, since it poisons the intellectual atmosphere.
CA: No, many people agree on what makes something potentially offensive, and this censorship won't harm society.

Why is CA's argument flawed?

A. There's no specific case involved, only a generalization is presented.

B. Again, no principle based on a commonly held belief. Just a general statement made.

C. He does NOT attack the CL's character at all.

D. The CL says that CATEGORICAL prohibition is bad, but the CA tries to refute this saying "we can easily determine what is potentially offensive" Well if you can do that, you still have to make the choice about what you will censor, so this is an irrelevant reason since it does not directly answer the concerns about CENSORSHIP. Thus an irrelevant reason is presented.

E. There's no exaggeration or abuse of any kind.

Pick D.