Q11 - On the basis of their statements, Mario and Lucy are c

[aznriceboi17]

The official explanation for this question is that since Mario is committed to the idea that to be a genuinely autonomous discipline, a field of study must have a domain of inquiry all of its own, then Mario must agree with (A).

I don't think this would most confuse test-takers, but I definitely spent a lot of time trying to think this through. Can we really say that Mario is committed to the truth of (A) when he simultaneously believes that philosophy is a genuinely autonomous discipline AND thinks it doesn't have a domain of inquiry all of its own?

More generally, if a person simultaneously believes in A and B, which are conflicting beliefs (both cannot simultaneously be true), can he actually be said to be committed to either of them? I don't think I've seen any other Points of Disagreement questions using this 'committed' language where one of the individuals had conflicting beliefs, and so was really thrown off by this.

[sumukh09]

We don't really know what Mario actually said about Philosophy; we only know what Lucy said Mario said about philosophy. Our task for this question is made much easier if we ignore that part of Lucy's rebuttal because Mario could just as easily respond with, "I never said such things about philosophy."

We're better suited to focus on exactly what the disagreement is here - or what's explicitly stated by both speakers - and we can do that by identifying the overlap between the two speakers' arguments. Filtering through all the clutter, this is what the two speakers' disagreement boils down to when we simplify their two arguments:

Mario: Autonomous Discipline --> Field of Inquiry All on its Own
Lucy: Autonomous Discipline ---> Unique Methodology

The disagreement here is about what an autonomous discipline entails, which is best addressed in answer choice A).

A) is something Lucy would agree with and Mario would disagree with. Also, note the contrapositive of Mario's statement:

~Field of Inquiry All on its Own ---> ~Autonomous Discipline

And note the contrapositive of A):

~Field of of Inquiry All on its Own (Or Unique Methodology) ---> Autonomous Discipline

That said, the issue here is what both speakers consider to be required by something that is an autonomous discipline.

Hope this helps!