Q23

[kburgess.anderson]

I'm confused about why answer choice B is the "primary purpose", rather than A?

As far as I can tell, the primary purpose is to explicate the nature of the "impasse" between objectivists and subjectivists. The closest thing to "advocating a possible solution" comes at the end with questions about what a solution would look like, but nothing is advocated. I see how A) "suggesting that there are valid aspects to both" is only part of the purpose, but it does seem a bit better to go with a partial answer like this, than one that is completely wrong, like B) no solution is proposed at all!

Thanks in advance for any hints on this one.

[noah]

For this question, we want to focus on why the author wrote this passage. An easy place to look is anywhere the author's voice appears. In this passage, as you note, the author speaks up in the last few paragraphs. If you take those alone, it's not too hard to see them as building up towards the point in the last paragraph. The structure of those paragraphs is this:

P3: explaining the impasse
P4: more detail and hint at solution
P5: explaining the solution

Since this is where we see the author speaking up, we want to focus on his or her point in this section.

As for the other answers:

(A) is too narrow and, on further review, is unsupported. While the author does explain the reasoning behind each point of view, the author doesn't really speak up and say either is valid.

(C) ad (D) are unsupported--the author is not criticizing or defending one point of view. This misses the point about the impasse!

(E) is complex and perhaps tempting. However the author doesn't evaluate the legitimacy of anything. The points of view are outlined but not evaluated.

[brian.diliberto]

delete

[maryadkins]

One thing that makes this question tricky is that the answer choices all use abstract language to describe what they're discussing. (Does this remind you of any question type in LR? Flaw Questions often do the same thing.)

The only answer choices that specifically use the word "mind" are (A) and (D) which are both off-base for the reasons Noah noted. You wouldn't want to choose them, then, solely because they used this specific word.

While (B) keeps it abstract ("debate" "impasse" "solution"), that doesn't mean it's NOT talking about the mind: the impasse and debate are all involving the mind.

So to answer your question, sometimes you'll have answer choices with concrete language. Other times, you'll have them with abstract language. This doesn't make them overly broad, because they are still talking about the same thing; it just can make them harder to translate and conceptualize. You want to be careful not to rule them out for this reason. The key is to pick the one that's accurately describing what's happening, even if it is in words you wouldn't necessarily have used yourself.