Passage Discussion

[andrewgong01]

This was a hard passage during the exam but it becomes easier after a re-read

The most important sentence is is from Line 14 "Some ....argue" and Line 19 "It follows from this we are wrong..." This becomes a standard challenge an old scientific view passage. This is verified in Q8, the main point question.

Passage Map:
P1: Introduction to the current state of knowledge and how we are infallible in accessing our internal thoughts; however, kids show this may not be a tenable proposition

P2: If this is not a tenable proposition why was it so tenable in the past ? Explains it via an analogy that we become an expert. Cites the example of a chess player

P3: Author hedges his/her argument against potential refutations by saying this study comes "perilously" close to some idea but it is not. In other words, the paragraph clarifies a potential misunderstanding of the new theory where the misunderstanding , if believed, would be fatal for the new theory( this is tested in Q10 and the key word is "perilous " and "But in fact") Then it seems like more intuition for the new theory is presented.


The scale could have been infallible vs fallible access to our thoughts at first glance. However, this challenge the theory template is interesting in that the twist is not so much explaining the new theory or why the old theory is wrong; rather, the general structure is first explaining why we believed in the old theory. Then, after explaining why we clung on to the old theory the passage reinterprets why we believe in the old theory to explain the new theory. In other words, it doesn't seem like the empirics/data was wrong that caused us to move to a new theory; rather, it is a misinterpretation of the empirics/data. It still seems confusing to understanding fully but a general idea on "we are experts in ourselves" seems enough for the questions

I think the 3rd paragraph is the hardest to understand , especially the latter half of it. I still don't understand it fully on what exactly it is saying but the general idea seems to be hedging against a potential refutation and then show why the new theory the author talks about should be given some credence.
That said, after looking through all the questions it doesn't seem like any of the questions tested on the details of P3 if you trust your "feel" on the general gist of the passage to answer some of the questions around the intuition behind the new theory

[ohthatpatrick]

Nice work! I agree this was an unusually tough first read.

As I re-read it, I was thinking, "jeez author ... how about supplying ONE stupid concrete example of someone thinking they know their own thoughts but being wrong."

I wouldn't push too hard for a scale here. The author does offer some opinion at the end, but it's mainly saying, "I thought I was gonna pounce all over these psychologists' argument, but it's not quite going too far. It has some plausibility."

Our author seems to consider the possibility that we don't have infallible access to our own thoughts.
Our author would NOT accept the idea that we base our impression of our own thoughts on EXTERNAL behavior.
Instead, our author is pacified that psychologists are saying that we base our impression of our own thoughts in INTERNAL behavior, but that internal behavior is really just fleeting feelings and emotions, not actual thoughts.