Literary critic: There is little of social significance in contemporary novels, for readers cannot enter the internal world of the novelist’s mind unless they experience that world from the moral perspective of the novel’s characters. But in contemporary novels, the transgressions committed by some characters against others are sensationalistic spectacles whose only purpose is to make readers wonder what will happen next, rather than events whose purpose is to be seen as the injustices they are.

Which one of the following principles, if valid, would most help to justify the literary critic’s argument?