RAS question
Statement: 'Some engineers are artists. All artists are creative.' Conclusion I: Some engineers are creative. Conclusion II: All creative people are artists. Which conclusion(s) follow(s)?
Correct answer: (A) Only Conclusion I follows.
Only Conclusion I follows: because some engineers are artists and all artists are creative, some engineers must be creative.
Explanation
This is a straightforward deductive-reasoning question. NCERT's Journal of Indian Education explains the relevant rule: when the premises are true and the argument is valid, the conclusion is also true. Here, the first premise says that at least some engineers fall inside the class of artists. The second premise says every artist falls inside the class of creative people. Therefore, the engineers who are artists must also be creative, so Conclusion I follows. Conclusion II does not follow because it reverses the universal statement. From 'all artists are creative', we can place artists within creative people, but we cannot place every creative person within artists.
Why the other options are wrong
- (B) Conclusion II reverses the given universal statement, because 'all artists are creative' does not establish that all creative people are artists.
- (C) Both conclusions cannot follow, because Conclusion I is valid but Conclusion II adds a reverse relationship that the premises do not support.
- (D) It is wrong to reject both conclusions, because the engineers who are artists are necessarily creative under the two given premises.
Concept
This tests syllogism through deductive reasoning: a conclusion follows only when it is forced by the given premises. RAS reasoning papers often use such items to check whether candidates can avoid invalid conversion of universal statements.