Reading ComprehensionDifficulty: Medium

PT108 S1 P2 Q11 Explanation

Non-Objectivist Discourse

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Reading Comprehension question.

TopicsMeaning in ContextLaw

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Passage

In recent years, a growing belief that the way society decides what to treat as true is controlled through largely unrecognized discursive practices has led legal reformers to examine the complex interconnections between narrative and law. In many legal systems, legal judgments are based on competing stories about events. Without having witnessed in law from selective perception, or from subjective judgments based on prior experiences, values, and beliefs.

The societal harm caused by the assumption of objectivist principles in traditional legal discourse is that, historically, the stories judged to be objectively true are those told by people who are trained in legal discourse, while the stories of language of the law are rejected as false.

Legal scholars such as Patricia Williams, Derrick Bell, and Mari Matsuda have sought empowerment for the latter group of people through the construction of alternative legal narratives. Objectivist legal discourse systematically disallows the language of emotion and experience by focusing on cognition in its narrowest sense. These legal reformers propose replacing such by overcoming differences in background and training and forming a new collectivity based on emotional empathy.

What this question is testing

Meaning in Context

Your task

Pin down exactly what the question asks about the passage — a detail, the author's view, the structure, or the main point — before looking at the choices.

Common trap

Answers that restate a true detail from the passage but don't answer the specific question being asked.

Winning move

Anticipate the answer in your own words from the passage, then find the choice that matches that prediction.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
11.

Which one of the following best describes the sense of “cognition” referred to in

Answer choices

  1. Correct80% picked this

    logical thinking uninfluenced by

    Why this is right

    "Uninfluenced by passion" matches up well with "not emotional / neutral / unskewed". The logical part of this seems weird. But since "cognition" is what's allowed in objectivist discourse, and since we learned that objectivist discourse is biased towards those who are fluent in legal language, we can use our common sense to see that logical thinking seems reasonable.

    Skill tested: Meaning in Context · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

  2. Opposite: interpretation Too Narrow: visual2% picked this

    the interpretation of visual

    The word cognition in context definitely doesn't seem to be specifically about visual cues. And someone's interpretation would be the opposite of a neutral, objective, unskewed version of what happened. Interpretations are subjective, not objective.

  3. Opposite: emotion / experience9% picked this

    human thought that encompasses all emotion

    The word cognition in context is being contrasted with thought that is colored / skewed by emotion and experience. So this is the opposite of how it's being used.

  4. Not in Support Window4% picked this

    the reasoning actually employed by judges to arrive at

    The word cognition in context is being used in regards to witnesses and their testimony, not to judges. While this answer would share the logical thinking component of (A), this answer does not have the "not-emotion / not-experience" reinforcement that (A) has. In other words, (A) has something that matches our Support Window (uninfluenced by passion) and something not mentioned but reasonable (logical thinking). This answer would only have the latter, and it's talking about judges, not witnesses.

  5. Opposite: inspired by stories6% picked this

    sudden insights inspired by the power of

    The word cognition in context is defined as "not-emotion / not-experience". The language of experience is a synonym for "personal stories". Personal stories is where the author wants to take the legal profession, whereas cognition was used as a placeholder for the type of language that is currently used (dry, clinical, unskewed, neutral).

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