Novelists cannot become great as long as they remain in academia

Question

Novelists cannot become great as long as they remain in academia. Powers of observation and analysis, which schools successfully hone, are useful to the novelist, but an intuitive grasp of the emotions of everyday life can be obtained only by the kind of immersion in everyday life that is precluded by being an academic.

Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

(A) Novelists require some impartiality to get an intuitive grasp of the emotions of everyday life
(B) No great novelist lacks powers of observation and analysis
(C) Participation in life, interspersed with impartial observation of life, makes novelists great
(D) Novelists cannot be great without an intuitive grasp of the emotions of everyday life
(E) Knowledge of the emotions of everyday life cannot be acquired by merely observing and analyzing life

sayan640 · Answer

Novelists cannot become great as long as they remain in academia. Powers of observation and analysis, which schools successfully hone, are useful to the novelist, but an intuitive grasp of the emotions of everyday life can be obtained only by the kind of immersion in everyday life that is precluded by being an academic.

Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

(A) Novelists require some impartiality to get an intuitive grasp of the emotions of everyday life 
Irrelevant. No mention of impartiality .
 (B) No great novelist lacks powers of observation and analysis 
The emphasis is on 'intuitive grasp on life' and not on 'powers of observation and analysis". 
The flow is from "intuitive grasp on life that can be obtained in everyday life" to " novelist cant become great if they remain in academia".
The conclusion is " novelist cant become great if they remain in academia". This conclusion can not follow from "No great novelist lacks powers of observation and analysis".
If we negate this option it becomes "Some novelists lack powers of observation and analysis." Still the conclusion i.e "novelist cant become great if they remain in academia" follows.
So option B cant be the assumption. 
 (C) Participation in life, interspersed with impartial observation of life, makes novelists great

No mention of impartial observation of life". Irrelevant.
 (D) Novelists cannot be great without an intuitive grasp of the emotions of everyday life

Negate this option it becomes "novelists can become great without an intuitive grasp of the emotions of everyday life".
Intuitive grasp of emotions cant be obtained in academia. But novelists can still become great. The conclusion i.e "novelist cant become great if they remain in academia" can not follow. 
 (E) Knowledge of the emotions of everyday life cannot be acquired by merely observing and analyzing life

No mention of "merely observing and analyzing life". The passage talked about "Powers of observation and analysis,".
So option E is incorrect.

mykrasovski · Answer

nightblade354  can you please indicate whether or not my reasoning is correct?

This is an assumption question, and it has some conditional reasoning, i.e. the conclusion says that "if academia, then not great novelist". The question can be answered using the conditional reasoning.

In our case, the author says that "grasp of emotional life requires immersion, and academia precludes that", so that academia essentially prevents one from having the grasp of emotional life (EL), i.e. "academia = no grasp of EL"

Answer choice D says that "if no grasp of EL, then not great novelist". Since "academia = no grasp of EL", we see that this is a correct answer choice because it repeats the conclusion.

Frankly, it took me quite a while to figure out the logics (sufficient and necessary conditions). I am not very effective at using the conditional reasoning technique, but I felt the question is excellent and it tests the method. Would you share any advice how to become quicker at dissecting the prompt to solve similar problems? Thank you in advance.

P.S. I learned the Conditional Reasoning method in PowerScore CR Bible.

Raman109 · Answer

Understanding the argument - 
Novelists cannot become great as long as they remain in academia. - Conclusion. 
Powers of observation and analysis, which schools successfully hone, are useful to the novelist, but an intuitive grasp of the emotions of everyday life can be obtained only by the kind of immersion in everyday life that is precluded by being an academic. - Supporting premise. Basically, it says that while academia provides the power of observation and analysis, it doesn't provide an intuitive grasp.

Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

We need to find a missing premise or a minimum condition. We need to connect that "Novelists cannot become great as long as they remain in academia" with the premise that "while academia provides the power of observation and analysis, it doesn't provide an intuitive grasp." The gap is that an "intuitive grasp is necessary for novelists to become great."

(A) Novelists require some impartiality to get an intuitive grasp of the emotions of everyday life - Distortion.

(B) No great novelist lacks powers of observation and analysis - But that's not something that we need. We need an intuitive grasp. Out of scope.

(C) Participation in life, interspersed with impartial observation of life, makes novelists great - Which makes both the necessary conditions; thus, they can still be great while in academia. At best, it is a weakener.

(D) Novelists cannot be great without an intuitive grasp of the emotions of everyday life - Yes. It bridges the gap.

(E) Knowledge of the emotions of everyday life cannot be acquired by merely observing and analyzing life - Yes, the argument, in a way, already said this. See the ONLY way to get an intuitive grasp is by the kind of immersion in everyday life. At best, it's a strengthener. If we negate it, "Knowledge of the emotions of everyday life can be acquired by merely observing and analyzing life," which basically challenges the premise which says, "The ONLY way to get an intuitive grasp is by the kind of immersion in everyday life." Not only that, even if we knew that there is another way to get an intuitive grasp, we still need to tie it as a minimum condition to become a great novelist.

Novelists cannot become great as long as they remain in academia

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Novelists cannot become great as long as they remain in academia

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