PrepTest 113, Section 2, Question 11
Mark: To convey an understanding of past events,(104 more words not shown)
Mark's and Carla's positions indicate(12 more words not shown)
- AThe purpose of(10 more words not shown)
- BThe participants in(20 more words not shown)
- CHistorians can succeed(21 more words not shown)
- DHistorians should aim(12 more words not shown)
- EHistorians should use(18 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A soldier can tell us what the battle felt like. Does that give us the whole picture? The soldier might know little about the generals' strategy or the wider consequences. Still, that doesn't make the soldier's experience worthless. Mark wants historians to capture that experience so readers can understand the past.
Carla worries about choosing one person's view. Why that soldier rather than a general, or someone fighting on the other side? She thinks choosing a perspective will produce bias, so historians should stick to general, objective accounts. My reaction is that we might want both: individual experiences and a broader account. Mark hasn't explicitly said we must choose only one person's story. But that's my response to their discussion, not the disagreement we need to establish.
What we’re looking for
The question asks where Mark and Carla disagree. Mark wants participant perspectives included in the historian's work; Carla thinks that approach should be avoided. Look for a statement about what historians should do, with one speaker on each side.
Working the answers
- A
Mark explicitly wants to convey an understanding of past events. Carla disputes how historians should do that, not the broad aim of understanding the past. Nothing in her response puts her against A. People can share a goal while disagreeing about the best way to reach it.
- B
Mark says a soldier knows what the battle was like through direct experience. That isn't a claim that the soldier objectively understands the battle's ramifications. The experience of fighting and an understanding of its wider effects are different things. We don't have Mark taking the position B describes, so we can't establish the required disagreement.
- C
This asks whether historians can convey a past participant's experience. Carla's objection is that doing so would create a biased account. She could think historians can successfully convey that experience while also thinking they shouldn't make it their aim. We aren't told that she denies the ability described in C. Don't turn a disagreement about what is desirable into a disagreement about what is possible.
- DCorrect
Mark says historians should try to capture what experiencing past events was like. Carla says they should avoid the bias she thinks that approach would produce and stick to general, objective characterizations instead. So Mark supports the proposed aim, and Carla rejects it. This gives us the two opposing positions directly.
- E
Neither speaker proposes making up events to fill gaps in the historical record. An account from a participant's perspective needn't be fiction; it could be based on that person's actual experience. Their dispute over perspective doesn't establish a disagreement about fictional supplements.
More Disagreement questions
Learn the LSAT our way
Our platform drills Disagreement questions at your level and adjusts as you improve.