Reading comp PrepTest 152 · Section 3 · Question 17

Passage

Passage A  The legal system rests on the assumption that people use conscious deliberation when deciding how to act—that is, Remaining source text redacted.
Passage walkthrough
Passage Summary

Topic: Legal


Passage A

Paragraph 1

  • Paragraph note
    • Problem: The legal system assumes people have free will, but some behaviors occur without free will
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
    • Example of behavior that lacks free will:, according to the author
      • People with neurological disorders may involuntarily form facial expressions (last sentence)

Paragraph 2

  • Paragraph note
    • Question: Do all actions occur without free will?
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
    • Author's view:
      • The crucial legal question is whether all of our actions are beyond our control
      • Neurological evidence shows that all parts of the brain are interconnected, suggesting that no part of the brain is free (second and last sentences)
    • Author's attitude: "crucial" (first sentence); "suggests" (last sentence)

Paragraph 3

  • Paragraph note
    • Answer: If free will does exist, it has only a small impact on our decisions
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
    • Author's view:
      • If free will exists, it is at best a small factor in our decision-making, which is shaped by our genes and environment (first and sentence sentences)
      • Free will may be so small that we think of bad decision-making in the same way as a physical affliction (last sentence)
    • Author's attitude: "seems clear" (first sentence); "at best be a small factor" (second sentence)

Paragraph 4

  • Paragraph note
    • Solution: Rather than considering blameworthiness, the legal system should consider how one will act in the future
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
    • Author's view:
      • Blameworthiness is a backward-looking concept that requires untangling genes and environment and thus should not be considered in the legal system (first and second sentences)
      • The legal system should instead consider how an accused lawbreaker is likely to behave going forward (last sentence)
    • Author's attitude: "should thus be removed" (first sentence); "backward-looking concept" (second sentence); "impossible task of untangling the hopelessly complex web" (second sentence); "has to become" (last sentence)

Passage B

Paragraph 1

  • Paragraph note
    • Question: If people lack free will, how can the law move away from blame?
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
    • Author's view:
      • Rational arguments won't fully answer the question of how blame can be removed from the law (first and last sentence)
    • Points of intersection with passage A:
      • The author of passage B acknowledges that people may lack free will, just like the author of passage A (first sentence)
      • The author of passage B also acknowledges that blame plays a central role in the law, just like the author of passage A (last sentence)
    • Author's attitude: "paradox" (first sentence); "Rational arguments will only get you so far" (last sentence)

Paragraph 2

  • Paragraph note
    • Support: Evidence suggests that blame is deeply rooted in how humans think, so it's doubtful that blame could be removed from the law
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
    • Author's view:
      • Evidence suggests that humans make moral judgments even when they think behaviors are governed by physical processes (first sentence)
      • The concept of blame is deeply ingrained in our psyche, and no amount of will get rid of our reliance on blame (last sentence)
    • Point of intersection with passage A:
      • The author of passage B is considerably less hopeful that blame can be removed from the criminal justice process (last sentence)
    • Author's attitude: "indicates" (first sentence); "deeply rooted" (last sentence); "considerable doubt that any amount of scientific evidence can remove it" (last sentence)

Paragraph 3

  • Paragraph note
    • Support: We have tried and failed to get rid of the concept of blame
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
    • Author's view:
      • Rehabilitation was accepted by criminal justice experts in the mid-twentieth century, but public support waned (first through third sentences)
    • Author's attitude: "the public seems unwilling" (last sentence)

Paragraph 4

  • Paragraph note
    • Author's conclusion: The concept of blame much have a useful function, so the criminal justice system should try to understand it
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
    • Author's view:
      • Blaming is so much a part of the social life of humans that it must perform some useful social functions (first and second sentences)
      • The criminal justice system should seek to understand blame and respect the underlying social needs (last sentence)
    • Point of intersection with passage A:
      • The author of passage B wants to keep blame in the criminal justice system, while the author of passage A wanted to remove it entirely (last sentence)
    • Author's attitude: "My sense is that blaming performs some useful social function" (first sentence); "too intrinsically part of the social life of human beings for me to see it as a worthless appendage that can be harmlessly amputated" (second sentence): "should also seek a better understanding of why people blame and try to continue to respect the underlying social needs" (last sentence)

Main Points?

Passage A: The concept of blame should not be part of the legal system.

Passage B: The concept of blame is too integral to the social life of humans to be removed from the legal system.

Key Lines?

Passage A:

Paragraph 2, Sentence 1 (P2, S1): The question to be answered

P3, S1: Author's subsidiary conclusion

P4, S1/S3 - Author's main conclusion

Passage B:

P1, S1: The question to be answered

P2, S2: Author's opinion

P4, S1 - Author's main conclusion

Meta-Structure? Relationship Between Passages?

Relationship - Opposing Viewpoints: The authors of these two passages come to different conclusions. According to passage A, blame should be removed from the legal system. To the author of passage B, blame cannot be fully removed from the legal system, so the legal system should attempt to understand and respect blame's social function.

Interestingly, the authors stipulate the same premise. They both accept the possibility that people lack free will. Passage A provides some evidence for the lack of free will (PA, P2), whereas passage B conditions the entire argument on the assumption that people lack free will (PB, P1, S1).

Meta-Structure - Question/Answer: Passages A and B seek to answer the same question: should the legal system include the concept of blame? To find the main point of each passage, we can look for each author's answer to that question.

Last Thoughts?

These passages address almost identical topics with no major difference in the scopes of their arguments. Therefore, we should expect most questions will ask about the similarities, differences, and points of intersection between the two passages.

Question prompt

It is most likely Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: B

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Question Type

Legal

Strategy Overview

Review the main point, use notes or highlighted/underlined text in the passage to recall each author's attitude, and find the answer that one author would agree with and the other would disagree with

Answer Anticipation

This question asks us about the authors' views but doesn't provide any insight into the topic of the correct answer or where the supporting information might show up in the passage. This means the correct answer is likely to relate back to the authors' main points. As such, we'll need to rely on our big-picture understanding of the passages to answer this question. We should start by reminding ourselves of the main points from each passage. We can also review any notes about the authors' attitudes or any text we highlighted because it expressed the author's opinion.After doing that, we can head to the answer choices. For those answer choices that conform to one of the author's main points, we'll use our notes and the passage to see if the author would agree with that statement. Then, we can use our notes and the passage to ensure that the other author disagrees with the answer choice. If one author agrees and one author disagrees with an answer choice, it is correct. However, if either author is completely neutral on an answer choice, it is incorrect. Therefore, we should table or eliminate any answer choice we encounter that is irrelevant or incidental to both authors' main points.In this passage, where the authors reach divergent conclusions about whether blame should be removed from the criminal justice system, the correct answer could reflect the author's opposing conclusions. However, the correct answer could also relate to a more minor point of disagreement. So, we'll look for an answer choice that brings up whether blame should be removed from the criminal justice system while keeping an open mind about other potential disagreements.

Answer choices

  1. A
    A significant portion of Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A is not credited

    (A) Does this answer choice conform to either author's main point or what you recall about the authors' arguments?

    Yes, but most test-takers would recall that this is a point on which the authors agree. In fact, both authors' arguments are predicated on the assumption that people's choices are not made freely. For that reason, expert test-takers would eliminate this one without reviewing the passage.

    If we needed to review the passage to eliminate (A), we'd see that the author of passage A provides evidence suggesting that "no part is independent and therefore 'free.'" (PA, P2, S3). So while it isn't stated explicitly, the author gives us every reason to believe that we do not have free will. The author of passage B agrees that people lack free will. The argument in passage B presupposes that people lack free will (PB, P1, S1). Thus, both authors agree on the existence of free will.

  2. B
    If free will does Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B matches the stem

    (B) Does this answer choice conform to either author's main point or what you recall about the authors' arguments?

    Yes! As anticipated, this answer choice relates to the opposing conclusions the authors reach. Both authors' arguments assume that free will does not exist. According to passage A, if free will does not exist, the concept of blame should be removed from the criminal justice system (PA, P4, S1). To the author of passage B, blame cannot be removed even if free will does not exist because of blame's social utility (PB, P4, S1). So, the author of passage A would agree with this statement, while the author of passage B would disagree. Since we know the authors disagree about this point, we can select (B) and advance to the following question without assessing the remaining choices.

  3. C
    People should be imprisoned Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited

    (C) Does this answer choice conform to either author's main point or what you recall about the authors' arguments?

    No. Neither author's argument ever explicitly addresses when one should be imprisoned. For this reason, experienced test-takers would feel comfortable tabling or eliminating (C) without reviewing the passage.

    If we needed to inspect (C) more closely, we could see this answer choice wants us to erroneously infer the authors' beliefs on imprisonment. This answer choice wants us to believe that the author of passage A — who wants to remove blame from the criminal justice system and focus on modifying lawbreakers' future behavior — is against imprisonment. However, the author of passage A never said that a forward-looking criminal justice system would not imprison people. This answer choice also wants us to assume that the author of passage B — who wants to preserve the criminal justice system's conception of blame — is pro-prison. But again, the author of passage B never describes their position on imprisonment. We don't know either author's position on incarceration, so it is unclear whether either author would be for or against imprisonment in the absence of free will.

  4. D
    Actions that are completely Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D is not credited

    (D) Does this answer choice conform to either author's main point or what you recall about the authors' arguments?

    Yes, but most test-takers would recall that this is a point on which the authors agree. For this reason, decisive test-takers would likely table or eliminate (D) without reviewing the passage.

    If we needed to review (D) more closely, we could see that the author of passage A seems to agree with this. According to the author, free will can "at best be a small factor riding on top of vast neural networks shaped by genes and environment" (PA, P3, S2). The author also asserts that since the brain is interconnected, no part is independent or "free" (PA, P2, S3). These sentences suggest that the neural networks shaped by genes and the environment are not components of free will, so if actions were entirely determined by physical processes, they would not be free.

    Passage B says that people will continue making moral judgments even when they are conditioned to think that human behavior is determined by physical processes (PB, P2, S1). Elsewhere, the author of passage B suggests that people lack free will (PB, P1, S1). These statements, taken together, suggest that the author also believes that actions wholly determined by physical processes are not free.

  5. E
    It is easy to Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited

    (E) Does this answer choice conform to either author's main point or what you recall about the authors' arguments?

    This answer choice discusses removing the concept of blame, which is central to both authors' main points. Therefore, this answer choice demands closer scrutiny.

    Upon review, the author of passage B clearly disagrees with this statement. The author of passage B spends half of the passage detailing how it is difficult, if not impossible, to remove blame from everyday life. The author of passage A, however, never says anything to the contrary. In passage A, blame is only mentioned in the legal context. So, we do not learn that author's opinion on how easy it is to remove the concept of blame in everyday life. Since the author of passage A does not express an opinion on this answer choice, we cannot say the authors disagree on this statement.

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A 8%
  2. B Credited 56%
  3. C 7%
  4. D 8%
  5. E 22%

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