Q11

[austindyoung]

So, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Passage states, "Objectivist legal discourse systematically disallows the language of emotion and experience by focusing on cognition in its narrowest sense."

The Q asks us which one describes the sense of "cognition" referred to in line 43

The correct answer choice is (A): "logical thinking uninfluenced by passion."

So, I thought that was a type of cognition... not cognition generally, which I thought (C) better pointed to (though, not as an ideal choice...obviously).

My reasoning for this is that I thought the passage was stating that cognition had been narrowed- precluding the language of emotion and experience. (A) seems weird because if I insert it into the passage, instead of cognition, it almost seems tautological. Hope that makes sense...

Also, "narrowest sense" is claimed vis-a-vis cognition, and emotion and experience for that matter.

So my question is, "why is (A) correct?" It seems that (A) is referring to "narrowest sense," not to "cognition," of which the focus is a subset of.

I know I am probably missing something here- thanks

[giladedelman]

The relevant line says that "objectivist legal discourse systematically disallows the language of emotion and experience by focusing on cognition in its narrowest sense." So what is the "cognition" being referred to? It must be NOT emotion and experience. So we're looking for an answer that expresses this exclusion. (You're making a big assumption here: that the author thinks cognition in its widest sense would include these things. We actually have no basis to say that.)

(A) is the winner because it describes a kind of thinking that excludes emotion and experience.

(B) is totally out of scope -- visual cues don't factor in here.

(C) is really the exact opposite of what we want. The passage says that objectivists exclude emotion and experience by focusing on cognition. So cognition has to exclude those things in order for this to make any sense.

(D) is out because the reasoning judges use is not at issue here.

(E) is, like (C), coming from the opposite side of the scale. Personal stories are anathema to objectivists.

Does that answer your question?

[austindyoung]

I honestly never thought I'd have a forum expert directly answer questions I post on here- so, thank you so much!

I did make a big assumption there, which I didn't realize until you pointed it out.

I assumed that the author was speaking of cognition, in it's widest sense, as you stated.

And, now that I look at the stem, it explicitly states the "sense of cognition" that the passage is talking about. Well- that means its asking for a specific type of cognition- the type the objectivists espouse. I don't know how I missed this...

I also didn't look at it like you stated- as NOT emotion and experience- well, that's pretty much (A) states in other words.

Anyway- it does answer my question.

Thank you very much for the thorough explanation.

[WaltGrace1983]

I thought the tough answer choice to eliminate here was (D). Can someone look over my reasoning and tell me if I was correct?

(D) talks about the reasoning of the judges. Now the part that gets me tripped up is that the judges' reasoning is likely quite "logical" and "uninfluenced by passion." However, just because this is a quality of the judge's reasoning doesn't mean that we are actually interested in the judge's reasoning.

The reason why (A) is right is because it really gets at the heart of the objectivist mindset. To be objectivist, you obviously have to be objective and search for truth absent of passion, emotion, etc. Since line 43 is talking directly about the objectivist mindset, we are right to conclude that what it "focuses on" is in fact simply "logical thinking uninfluenced by passion."

[ohthatpatrick]

I think you completely nailed it. Hopefully, what (D) describes WOULD in fact be "logical thinking uninfluenced by passion", but it would be really out of context to bring in how judges make their decisions when in line 43 we're really just attempting to get a paraphrase for "abstract discourse", "disallowing emotion and experience".

[jm.kahn]

It's so amazing to see that the same issue in the question can trip testers far apart in time!!

I'm running into the same issue that the OP described so well. I'm however not convinced that "cognition" must be NOT emotion and experience and still having trouble with this.

>> So what is the "cognition" being referred to? It must be NOT >>emotion and experience. So we're looking for an answer that >>expresses this exclusion. (You're making a big assumption here: >>that the author thinks cognition in its widest sense would >include these things. We actually have no basis to say that.)

The question is -- which of the following describes the sense of "cognition" being referred to in line 43.

So, the question is asking about meaning of "cognition" and not about the meaning of phrase "cognition in its narrowest sense."

The right answer doesn't need to necessarily exclude emotion and experience. The question seems to be about "cognition" isn't referring to its meaning in its narrowest sense.

Could experts please explain. I picked C because I actively looked for an answer that was about cognition not in its narrowest sense.

Also, not sure why D is wrong for cognition in its narrowest sense....A seems to assume that legal discourse means logical thinking. But the term "logical" isn't mentioned once in the passage so why only "logical thinking"; it could mean a number of other things-- writing, speaking etc. There doesn't seem to be any specific evidence that objectivist discourse is about logical thinking.