PrepTest 142, Section 3, Question 19
Passage A  To a neuroscientist, you are your(463 more words not shown)
Passage A(205 more words not shown)
Passage B(266 more words not shown)
One purpose of the reference(19 more words not shown)
- Acharacterize Ayer as(7 more words not shown)
- Badd credence to(5 more words not shown)
- Csuggest that the(9 more words not shown)
- Dsuggest that the(17 more words not shown)
- Eadd intellectual respectability(11 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
Why mention Hume immediately after introducing Ayer? The author tells us that a philosopher had defended this possibility two centuries earlier. Ayer's account belongs to an established philosophical discussion; it is not being introduced as an isolated new suggestion.
What we’re looking for
The reference lends support or credibility to the position. That is the rhetorical job to identify, even though an idea's age would not by itself prove it true.
Working the answers
- A
The reference shows that Ayer was not the first to defend the possibility, but its purpose is not to criticize his originality. B explains the view and applies it to neuroscience without turning the historical connection into an attack on Ayer.
- BCorrect
Invoking Hume as an earlier proponent gives soft determinism a philosophical pedigree. The sentence presents continuity between thinkers in support of taking the theory seriously. That adds credence without supplying a new scientific proof.
- C
B is not saying the theory matters mainly as a historical artifact. The final paragraph applies it to contemporary questions about the brain. An earlier origin does not make its importance primarily historical.
- D
We are not told when mechanistic descriptions of the brain began. Hume's date therefore cannot establish that the two have existed for the same length of time.
- E
Soft determinism aims to accommodate causally determined action, not to prohibit mechanistic descriptions of the brain. B opens with those descriptions and ends by applying the theory to them. E gives the reference a different argumentative purpose.
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