Q17

[hyewonkim89]

I often have a really hard time with comparative passages...

What makes (E) better than (A)?

I thought Passage B was sort of agreeing with Passage A but with more skepticism. Passage B's explanation of interests in behaviors seemed to be an additional argument.

Please help!

[esultana]

I'm no LSAT geek but I'll try to help!

I may have gotten lucky here because psych was one of my majors in college, so I am familiar with the basic ins and outs of evolutionary psych. These two passages outline the basic views for and against evolutionary psych.

Passage A: Evolutionary Psych can explain altruism in human behavior. Yay Evolutionary Psych!
Passage B: Evolutionary Psych should be seriously considered, but ultimately it is "a kind of conspiracy theory" because I'm not so sure it has valid reasoning.

Here are some quotes from the text in passage B that show this:

- "E.P. is a kind of conspiracy theory" (35) typically when something is a conspiracy theory, it is not to be trusted because the reasoning of the theory is questionable. (Conspiracy theory: Alien space ships have landed on Earth! reasoning: We have fuzzy pictures as evidence!)

- Paragraph 1 talks about how the reasoning of evolutionary psychology is questionable

- "... can APPEAR persuasive on the face of it" (43) typically when an argument says that the ----- "appears ----- on the face of it", the argument is implying that beneath the surface it is different.

- "Are they right? / Maybe yes, maybe no" (52-53) The author is clearly not siding with Passage A. However he isn't fully going against it, either. He is definitely questioning it though, which would go against your concern about answer (A). Questioning something is definitely not compatible with seeking to support it.

When I was taking this exam, the purpose of passage B was finalized during lines 56-59 -
It states the issue it finds with E.P. (that it selects a specific evolutionary reason when there could be many other things to explain a certain behavior) and says that what E.P. would need to be able to do to resolve that issue (find exactly and only one thing to explain a certain behavior) But then goes on to say that "such cases are vanishingly rare" i.e., he thinks it highly unlikely that E.P. will be able to resolve the issue. So we can conclude that the author in passage B questions the reasoning in passage A.

I hope this helps.

[maryadkins]

Great response! Thanks for sharing! You're exactly right about the support for (E).

(A) is in effect the opposite of (E).

(B) is wrong because there isn't an analogy made to make a point.

(C) is wrong because Passage B doesn't cite an inaccurate observation.

(D) is extreme--"no possible evidence?" It's also too strong in saying that Passage A's claims are "vacuous."

[danielznelson]

Could not an "analogous argument" as noted in answer choice "B" refer to the paragraph on monogamous families and the explanation for them? I didn't select "B," as I did not find what I see to be an actual "analogous argument" to be the purpose of passage "B."

[olaizola.mariana]

I think the flaw in (B) is that the conclusion of that analogous argument is not at all "clearly false." On lines 52-53, the author says: "Are they right? Maybe yes, maybe no," i.e. there is too much ambiguity to arrive at a reliable conclusion.