PrepTest 139, Section 1, Question 23
Anthropologist: Every human culture has taboos against eating(77 more words not shown)
In the argument, the(1 more words not shown)
- Acalls an explanation(25 more words not shown)
- Bestablishes that an(22 more words not shown)
- Crejects the reasoning(27 more words not shown)
- Dargues in support(14 more words not shown)
- Edescribes a hypothesis(23 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
A horse can pull a plow. Is that why people decided not to eat it, or did the decision not to eat it come first?
The researchers point to animals that provide useful labor and say food taboos arose solely for practical reasons. I can see the proposed benefit: keeping a working animal alive lets people keep using its labor. But that doesn't establish that practical benefit was the only reason the taboo began.
The anthropologist supplies another possible history. A culture could first prohibit eating an animal for symbolic or ritualistic reasons. Once people were keeping those animals alive, they might find other uses for them. We'd end up with both useful animals and a taboo against eating them, just as the researchers observed, but with a different explanation of the taboo's origin.
What we’re looking for
The anthropologist only says this might have happened. That's enough to question whether the researchers' evidence establishes their explanation. For the method question, I'd describe the move as offering a possible alternative that fits the same observations, not proving which history actually occurred.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
The phenomenon is the taboo against eating certain animals. The researchers explain it by pointing to practical usefulness; the anthropologist shows how that usefulness could instead develop after a taboo rooted in symbolism or ritual. The observation that these animals provide labor fits either story, so it doesn't settle the researchers' proposed explanation.
- B
Showing that evidence doesn't establish an explanation is different from establishing that the explanation is false. The anthropologist leaves the researchers' account possible while challenging their confidence that practical reasons alone explain the taboos. B claims a stronger result.
- C
The alternative isn't declared more plausible than the researchers' explanation. The anthropologist only needs it to be compatible with the observations to show that those observations don't establish a single account. C adds a comparison of plausibility that the argument doesn't make.
- D
The anthropologist doesn't introduce evidence that conflicts with the researchers' account. The point is that the existing observations also fit another account. Evidence compatible with two explanations is not evidence incompatible with one of them.
- E
This comes close to the change in order we noticed, but it says the anthropologist argues that the events occurred in a different sequence. The actual claim is that they might have occurred differently. Offering a possible alternative order doesn't establish that alternative as the true history.
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