PrepTest 130, Section 3, Question 15
Sonya: Anyone who lives without constant awareness of(35 more words not shown)
Sonya's statements, if true, most(7 more words not shown)
- AAnyone who places(25 more words not shown)
- BEither no one(16 more words not shown)
- CIt is impossible(9 more words not shown)
- DEveryone whose emotional(11 more words not shown)
- EIt is better(20 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Sonya gives us a bleak pair of possibilities. If you aren't constantly aware of life's fragility, your mind is clouded by illusion. If you are constantly aware of it, your emotional outlook is tainted.
What we’re looking for
I might wonder why someone can't recognize that life is fragile and then spend time focusing on its happier aspects. But the question asks what Sonya's statements support if they are true. So we need to work within her division: either someone has the constant awareness or does not. Each side brings one of the stated consequences. Constant awareness brings a tainted outlook; lacking constant awareness brings illusion. Everyone must therefore have at least one of those consequences. That doesn't say everyone has the same one, or that a person couldn't have both.
Working the answers
- A
Sonya doesn't discuss which goal people give higher priority. Also, lacking constant awareness isn't the same as being completely unaware. A person might sometimes recognize life's fragility without thinking about it continually. This answer adds both a claim about priorities and a stronger claim about unawareness.
- B
Sonya's division applies to individuals; it doesn't empty one category for the whole population. Imagine 20 percent of people have constant awareness and a tainted outlook, while the other 80 percent lack constant awareness and have clouded minds. Both categories are occupied, consistently with Sonya's statements. B wrongly says one of them contains nobody.
- C
Sonya leaves open people who are constantly aware and have a tainted emotional outlook without self-deception. An unpleasant or tainted outlook isn't itself an illusion. So even if we connect a clouded mind with self-deception, the statements don't establish that everyone must deceive themselves.
- DCorrect
If someone's outlook is untainted, that person cannot be constantly aware of life's fragility under Sonya's second statement: constant awareness would taint the outlook. The person therefore lacks constant awareness and falls under the first statement, which says the mind is clouded by illusion. D follows the two claims together.
- E
Sonya describes the consequences of awareness and its absence, but she doesn't rank them. She might prefer awareness, prefer an untainted outlook, or regard both options as troubling. The passage gives us no judgment that one is better than the other.
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