kidchaos wrote:
All German philosphers, except for Marx, are idealists.
From which of the following can the statement above be most properly inferred?
A. Except for Marx, if someone is an idealist philosopher, then he or she is German.
B. Marx is the only non-German philosopher who is an idealist.
C. If a German is an idealist, then he or she is a philosopher, as long as he or she is not Marx.
D. Marx is not an idealist German philosopher.
E. Aside from the philosopher Marx, if someone is a German philosopher, then he or she is an idealist.
KAPLAN OFFICIAL EXPLANATION:
E
Read carefully! You're asked to pick the choice from which the statement can be derived, and that's (E): If, as (E) says, anyone who is a German philosopher is an idealist except for the philosopher Marx, then all German philosophers except for Marx are idealists. That being the case, it would certainly be true that, as the stimulus says, with the exception of Marx, all German philosophers-these folks being a subset of all Germans-are idealists. Now while (E)'s claim that all German philosophers are idealists may sound a bit absurd to you (perhaps you know some German philosophers who aren't idealists), we're concerned with strict logic here, not content.
(A) tells us that except for Marx, if someone's an idealist philosopher, then he or she is German, which is precisely the opposite of what we need: Knowing that all idealist philosophers (except Marx) are German doesn't prove that all German philosophers are idealists, because there could be other kinds of German philosophers. Since the stimulus statement tells us that Marx is a German philosopher who's not an idealist, (B), which contradicts this, is wrong. (C) lets us conclude that German idealists who aren't Marx are philosophers, but we need to conclude that German philosophers (except Marx) are idealists. As for (D), like the stimulus statement, it tells us that Marx isn't an idealist German philosopher, but we need a statement that ensures that every other German philosopher besides Marx is an idealist.