Q7 - Computers perform actions that are

[peg_city]

Why is A right?

No where in the passage does it state that having volitional powers need not involve thinking.

It does say that "computers perform actions that are closer to thinking than anything nonhuman animals do"

What am I missing?

[frankdio]

Maybe this helps...

Here's how I thought of it

1.

CT>NHAT


2.

C-->~V

Some NHA --> V

This is an inference Q so Ill try to kill some AC since I cant predict what the correct answer choice is


A) No glaring problems leave it

B) We don't know anything about Not Animals only some Non Human animals and Computers... Maybe some martian out there has volitional powers (kill)

C) None is too strong here... and maybe even out of scope but since C-->T and T is a human attribute (kill)

D) T-->V No because you there exists a C-->somewhat T and C-->~V so T does not result in V

E) Out of scope

By process of elimination A was the only one left. We know there is at least one NHA who has V and this little guy does not think as good as a computer if at all...

Im sure one of the mods can do better, wanted to give it a shot bc I found this one fun

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

I like you're work frankdio! But I'd be careful about pulling out conditional logic when it's unnecessary. Notation can be a very useful tool, but it also can be a big distraction. Sure logic underlies this question, but notating will take more effort and interpretation than is time efficient in this case.

Here's how I see answer choice (A) implied.

We know that some nonhuman animals have volitional powers. We also know that no nonhuman animals are capable of thinking.

(while this statement is not made explicitly, one can infer it from the claim that computers perform actions closer to thinking than anything nonhuman animals are capable of)

The two statements above imply that there are some animals that have volitional powers, yet are not capable of thinking. Best expressed in answer choice (A).

(B) is out of scope. We are not given information about things that are not animals, other than computers.
(C) goes beyond the information in the stimulus. Other attributes of living things besides thinking are not addressed.
(D) twists the information in a clever way. We know that thinking is not necessary for volitional powers. That doesn't mean that volitional powers are necessary in order to think.
(E) projects into the future when the information only allows one to infer about the present.

I hope that helps!

[nflamel69]

^ amazing point. this is exactly what I had in mind when I reviewed this problem. from the info we are given, I think it's only valid that we know both groups (nonhuman animals and computers) cannot think. And that is a good reason to eliminate D, since we know nothing about thinking. Side question, can we infer that humans are capable of thinking from this? I know it's not stated in the stimulus, but that would be common sense. And I vaguely remember that we couldn't violate common sense right?

[sumukh09]

We also know that no nonhuman animals are capable of thinking.

Hey Matt,

I was wondering how exactly it is that we know this. The stimulus says computers are closer to thinking than anything nonhuman animals do. But does this necessarily imply that nonhuman animals don't think at all?

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

The stimulus says computers are closer to thinking than anything nonhuman animals do. But does this necessarily imply that nonhuman animals don't think at all?

Hey sumukh09! Saying that computers perform actions closer to thinking than nonhuman animals do does imply that nonhuman animals do not think. The actions of computers are closer to (which implies something less than) thinking than anything nonhuman animals do. But if those actions (something less than thinking) is closer to thinking than what nonhuman animals do, nonhuman animals definitely do not think.

Hope that helps!

[donghai819]

Hi Matt and other teachers,

I am unsure of that we can be 100% sure to conclude that nonhuman animals can't think at all. We could suppose that the actions performed by computers is 99.99% alike to thinking, and that the actions are only 0.01 closer to thinking than nonhuman animals do.
I feel very uncomfortable of dealing with this question, perhaps because it involves comparison and has the nature of MSS question.

I definitely want to hear some insights of the underlying issues in this question.

Thanks in advance!

[ohthatpatrick]

In terms of what you were suggesting about MSS Inference questions, you do NOT want to catch yourself saying stuff like, "I am unsure of that we can be 100% sure to conclude that nonhuman animals can't think at all.

You don't need to be 100% sure of a correct answer on MSS. It just has to be better supported than the other options.

But I'm not sure what that has to do with selecting the correct answer here.

The gist of this information is that both computers and nonhuman animals do NOT have genuine thinking abilities.

So comparing how close computers get vs. how close nonhuman animals get seems to be missing the point.

Neither one gets there. Neither one is thinking
(technically, computers could, but nonhuman animals can't)

We're justifying (A) by combining two facts we were told about nonhuman animals:
1. none of them think
2. some have volitional powers

You're making a switch from using "X is closer to _____ than Y is"
to saying "X is more alike _____ that Y is"

By switching to that language, you're treating thinking (correctly, I think, in real life) as a continuum of similarity.

It's not a binary idea of YOU DO or YOU DON'T have the ability to think, it's more like "HOW MUCH can you think?"

But, the language we're presented with implies a binary idea of YOU DO or YOU DON'T have the ability to think.

It's as if we said "Computers are closer to the city of Las Vegas than any nonhuman animal is."

So if asked you, based on that fact,
"do you know whether computers are actually in the city of Las Vegas?"
or
"do you know whether nonhuman animals are actually in the city of Las Vegas?"

The gist-y answer is that neither one is there yet. Computers are closer to being there than nonhuman animals are.

(The precise, tricky reading IS compatible with the idea that computers ARE actually there. THEIR distance to Vegas must be smaller than nonhuman animals' distance to Vegas. So technically the computers' distance to Vegas could be 0. But nonhuman animals MUST have SOME distance from Vegas, some distance from "actually thinking".)

Hope this helps.