PrepTest 148, Section 2, Question 1
The following passage is adapted from a journal(460 more words not shown)
According to the passage, Rawls(11 more words not shown)
- Aa thought(1 more words not shown)
- Ba process of(1 more words not shown)
- Can empirical study(3 more words not shown)
- Da deduction from(4 more words not shown)
- Ea consideration of(4 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
Imagine choosing rules without knowing where you will fit into society. Rawls isn't reporting what a group of actual participants did; he is asking us to think through a hypothetical situation. The cake example helps explain that approach, and the fourth paragraph explicitly calls the original position a “thought experiment.”
Working the answers
- ACorrect
The hypothetical original position lets Rawls explore what self-interested people would choose without information about their own circumstances. That is the named device used to explain the theory.
- B
Rejecting utilitarianism doesn't make this a process of eliminating alternatives until only one theory remains. Rawls introduces a hypothetical procedure to explain his own approach.
- C
No empirical study of social institutions is reported. Imagining people choosing principles differs from observing and measuring what people or institutions actually do.
- D
Rawls certainly reasons about justice, but the device identified here is a hypothetical situation, not a derivation of the theory from a small set of stated basic principles. Don't select a broad description of philosophical work over the specific method the text names and illustrates.
- E
The discussion explains Rawls's ideas, but it doesn't build the theory by examining the meanings of words. An activity that sounds philosophical is not automatically the activity described.
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