Shanna: Owners of any work of art, simply by virtue of ownership

Question

Shanna: Owners of any work of art, simply by virtue of ownership, ethically have the right to destroy that artwork if they find it morally or aesthetically distasteful, or if caring for it becomes inconvenient.

Jorge: Ownership of unique artworks, unlike ownership of other kinds of objects, carries the moral right to possess but not to destroy. A unique work of art with aesthetic or historical value belongs to posterity and so must be preserved, whatever the personal wishes of its legal owner.

On the basis of their statements, Shanna and Jorge are committed to disagreeing about the truth of which one of the following statements?

(A) Anyone who owns a portrait presenting his or her father in an unflattering light would for that reason alone be ethically justified in destroying it.
(B) People who own aesthetically valuable works of art have no moral obligation to make them available for public viewing.
(C) Valuable paintings by well-known artists are seldom intentionally damaged or destroyed by their owners.
(D) If a piece of sculpture is not unique, its owner has no ethical obligation to preserve it if doing so proves burdensome.
(E) It is legally permissible for a unique and historically valuable mural to be destroyed by its owner if he or she tires of it.

A common tool in "Point at Issue" questions is that if "Point at Issue" in stimulus is ethical, then any factual options are not considered answers and vice versa.
Here some answers are not considered after giving explanations that they involve factual issues. I am having trouble in sorting these factual/ethical options out. Can any of CR gurus help me out in sorting this question out? Any other approach apart from ethical/factual issue would be fine.

CrackverbalGMAT · Accepted Answer

let us try to break the argument down -

Shanna:
 for owners of ANY work of art  :  Morally or ethically distasteful OR caring for it becomes inconvenient ---> Ethically have the right to destroy it

Jorge:
 for owners of UNIQUE works of art:   No Moral right to destroy.

Note that Shanna and Jorge disagree whether such people have the moral right to destroy unique pieces of artwork.
We cannot say this about ANY works of art because we do not what Jorge's opinions on those are.

Option A - correct.
"Anyone who owns a portrait presenting his or her father in an unflattering light would  for that reason alone  be ethically justified in destroying it."

this option suggests that just because the portrait is distasteful, the owner has the right to destroy it. Jorge would disagree because he wants to ascertain whether the piece of art is unique or not.

Option B - incorrect.
the arguments do not mention about obligations toward public viewing, only about destroying it.

Option C - incorrect.
We have no idea how frequently such works of art are destroyed by their owners.

Option D - Incorrect.
We know that Shanna agrees with this statement. But we have no idea what Jorge's opinion on this is. He may or may not agree. Hence, incorrect.

Option E - Incorrect.
the argument only talks about ethical/moral rights, not legal rights.

piyatiwari · Answer

I would go with C.

On the basis of their statements, Shanna and Jorge are committed to disagreeing about the truth of which one of the following statements?

>> Question asks us to identify the assumption made by Shanna and Jorge while they make statements about distruction of artsy stuff. They both assume that any damage/destruction to/of artsy things will be done intentionally. C denies that.

(C) Valuable paintings by well-known artists are seldom intentionally damaged or destroyed by their owners.

joshnsit · Answer

Seldom is something which skews this answer. Moreover it is uniqueness rather than valueable-ness of the painting which differs the opinion between two speakers.

OE says that Answer choice (C) states that valuable paintings are seldom destroyed by their owners. Whether or not this occurs is a factual issue that can be determined by examining records, etc.
And since the argument is ethical, so any factual answer ie C or E could be answer.

karun0109 · Answer

I would go with A.

B) irrelevant
C) Is a stated fact. Disagreements on these would not be along the lines of whether intentional destruction is justified or not. They would rather be along the lines of whether it occurs or not... therefore wrong
D) Their is no disagreement between the two on this issue as even Jorge only argues agains the right to destroy UNIQUE objects of art and not all objects of art. so wrong
E) The legality is not in question. irrelevant.

A by POE and also because it refers to the destruction of a work of art being justified simply because the person destroying it is the owner.. the object is also presumably unique because it is a portrait of the owners father. A fits best. Good question.

ankujgupta · Answer

Is E wrong because we are talking about legal obligation ?

sayantanc2k · Answer

Your understanding is correct. If one of the persons said that it is legal to destroy artwork and the other said it is illegal, then option E would be correct.

pafrompa · Answer

Was thinking about A, but sided with B. The reason i steered clear of A was because it did not mention anything about " aesthetic or historical
value", which the second argument hinges on. Instead, I felt that B was closer to the original argument as instead of destroying a piece of work, an individual could just file it away forever, never to be seen again.

Could someone give me their two cents on this?

sleepynut · Answer

Hi experts,
But how can the portrait in option A has any historical value?
Jorge presents his view on unique artworks,not any form of art just like a simple portrait of anyone's father.

Thanks

sayantanc2k · Answer

The portrait may have aesthetic value (Jorge argues about portraits with aesthetic OR historical value).

One may argue that since a portrait owned by him / her depicts his / her own father, he / she has the right to destroy it. Shanna would agree with this person, indicating that owning the artwork is enough to have the right to destroy it, but Jorge would disagree, indicating that the portrait may be aesthetically valuable, and thus the owner does not have right to destroy it.

sayantanc2k · Answer

B is out of scope because the difference in Shanna's view and Jorge's view is not about whether the artwork should be made available for public vieweing, but about the right to destroy an artwork. My above post explains why option A is correct.

hotshot02 · Answer

We have to select the option for which both Shanna and Jorge disagree (Please correct if I am wrong). Then how come A is correct ? It will be really helpful if you can explain all the options

sayantanc2k · Answer

If we say that we disagree about some point, the statement implies that we are on the opposite sides about that point.

lynnglenda · Answer

Ans : (A)

In simpler terms, the question stem asks us to find the statement amongst the choices that one person in the dialogue would consider true and that the other person would consider false. Understanding what the testmakers are after here helps us to conceive of a logical test for each choice.

Take (A), for example. What would Shanna think of the truth of this statement? She would think it was true, right? Sure—if you don’t like it, according to Shanna, you’re ethically justified, “for that reason alone,” to destroy it. 
Would Jorge have an opinion regarding the truth of the statement in (A)? Yes—he would not believe the owner of such a portrait can ethically destroy it “for that reason alone.” Based on his argument, he would impose another restriction: The painting must not be “a unique work of art with aesthetic or moral value.” If it is, then it should not be destroyed.

Shanna would agree with the truth of (A), while Jorge would not, which means that (A) is the answer we seek.

(B) Public viewing is beyond the scope of both arguments. The issue here is the right to destroy versus the obligation to preserve.

(C) and (E) are out of the scope. The issue here is whether and under what circumstances it is morally permissible to destroy works of art. Whether intentional damage and destruction happens often or not, (C), is irrelevant to this question. As for (E), what does legal permissibility have to do with moral permissibility?

(D) Shanna would agree with this statement even if the piece of sculpture were unique. We can infer that Jorge would agree with this statement as well; his mandate for preservation applies only to unique works of art. So (D) turns out to be an au-contraire choice, as both parties would seem to agree, not disagree, about the truth of this statement.

• Mind those scope shifts! The word “legally” in choice (E) should stick out like a sore thumb.
• This is an offshoot of a Point-at-Issue question, but unlike a typical Point-at-Issue question, we’re not asked for the specific idea that comes between Shanna and Jorge. Rather, we’re asked to use what we know about the discrepancy in their positions to recognize a statement that one would regard as true and the other would regard as false. (That is, after all, what “disagreeing about the truth of a statement” means. Always translate a confusing-sounding or complex stem in order to get it into a form that’s easier to use.)

Rosso · Answer

KarishmaB   GMATNinja   Bunuel 
Experts please help...

I'm a bit confused with the question.
Two people disagree means they disagree with each other or they BOTH disagree with the choice?

KarishmaB · Answer

'They disagree  about the truth of statement A' means they disagree with each other. One says the statement is true while the other says it is not true.

temporeincidunt · Answer

Correct answer: A
Why A is right:
Shanna: Owners may ethically destroy any artwork they dislike.
Jorge: Owners may not destroy unique, valuable artworks; they belong to posterity.
Both directly disagree on whether destroying an artwork one dislikes is ever ethically justified, which is exactly what A states.
Why the others are wrong:
B: Neither talks about public viewing obligations.
C: Factual claim about frequency, not ethics—outside their debate.
D: Shanna doesn’t distinguish uniqueness; Jorge only restricts destruction of unique works. No direct disagreement on non-unique works.
E: Both discuss ethics, not legal permissibility.

Adit_ · Answer

These kind of problems simply test how well one can assimilate data.
The traps to notice:
1) Jorge is talking of  unique  artworks.
2) Shanna is talking of  any  artwork.
3) Statements are  challenging   ethics  and not  legality .

Keeping these 3 points in mind its easy to rule out all options except A which is our answer.

Shanna: Owners of any work of art, simply by virtue of ownership

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Shanna: Owners of any work of art, simply by virtue of ownership

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