LR Drill Set 5, Question 8
The capacity of human beings to feel pleasure(45 more words not shown)
The conclusion of the argument(10 more words not shown)
- ASatisfaction and pleasure(11 more words not shown)
- BFeelings accompanying the(12 more words not shown)
- CPeople are motivated(14 more words not shown)
- DHuman beings' desires(10 more words not shown)
- EHuman neurological processes(14 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Pleasure and getting what you want aren't automatically the same thing.
The passage gives a physiological limit on pleasure: it occurs only when certain neurotransmitter levels rise above what the brain is accustomed to. Let's accept the stated limit rather than try to supply our own neuroscience. The conclusion then says this also limits the satisfaction of our desires.
That is the step to examine. We were talking about feeling pleasure; now we're talking about satisfying a desire. The connection sounds plausible, but the argument hasn't stated it.
Could someone get something they wanted without feeling pleasure? If so, the limit on pleasure wouldn't automatically constrain that way of satisfying a desire.
What we’re looking for
The question asks us to make the conclusion follow. My prediction is that satisfying desires must depend on pleasure. If pleasure is required, then the inability to experience pleasure also blocks satisfaction. That would carry the stated constraint across from the premise's subject to the conclusion's subject. We need that particular dependence, not just a sentence mentioning both concepts.
Working the answers
- A
Calling both satisfaction and pleasure physiological states doesn't make one dependent on the other. Two states can both occur in a body and still have different requirements. Even if we understood “satisfaction” here to mean satisfaction of desires, A wouldn't establish that the limit on pleasure also restricts it. Shared classification isn't the missing connection.
- B
Whether a feeling is genuinely valuable is a new issue. The conclusion concerns what limits the satisfaction of desires, not which feelings deserve to be valued. A person could experience a feeling that fails B's test for value and still satisfy a desire. B doesn't make pleasure a requirement for that satisfaction.
- C
This explains what motivates people's actions: an urge to satisfy a desire. But wanting to achieve something doesn't tell us which conditions must be present to achieve it. Even if all action had that motive, we would still need the relationship between satisfaction and pleasure before applying the physiological limit.
- DCorrect
Desires cannot be satisfied without feelings of pleasure. Now pleasure is a requirement, rather than a separate topic. When the physiological principle prevents someone from feeling pleasure, that person cannot satisfy desires either, because doing so would require the missing feeling. That establishes the constraint the conclusion claims. D needn't say that pleasure guarantees satisfaction; making it necessary is enough for the limit on pleasure to matter.
- E
Uniform neurological processes wouldn't tell us how pleasure and satisfaction depend on each other. Everyone could share the same two processes while they remained independent. And different people could have different processes while all still needed pleasure to satisfy desires. What matters is the connection, not whether every individual's wiring is identical.
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