Logical Reasoning

PT21 · S3 · Q24 Explanation must be distinguished

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Explanation must be distinguished from justification.

Statements

Explanation -- a causal explanation of why something happened (i.e. why did Jason kiss Stella? His DNA is programmed to secrete high levels of dopamine when he sees a biological female ...)

Justification -- what were the reasons going through Jason's head when he decided to kiss Stella? If he had sufficient reasons for kissing her (i.e. I like her, I l think she is into me, we only live once)

The paragraph explains how these two things sometimes overlap, sometimes don't.

conditional (only when = put it on the right)

Justified → person has sufficient reasons action for the action

(only = put it on the right)

Rational → the justification (reasons) action for the action are an essential part of explanation

Evaluate

This is a tough read. I understood it to be referring to the classic Mind / Body problem. Do we have free will? Do we get to choose, based on our rational reasoning, which actions to perform? Or are our actions explained by a bunch of biochemical reactions in our brain/nervous system?

The paragraph is using explanation to refer to that biochemical scientific understanding of an action. And it's using justification to refer to how our mind's understanding that action, as an action we chose to do based on reasons we considered.

Many psychologists are saying that sometimes there's a justification for an action (i.e. Jason has plenty sufficient reasons to kiss Stella), but that doesn't play any role in the causal explanation.

However, rational actions are when the mental dialogue of why the person is doing the action is actually a crucial part of the causal explanation of the action.

Goal

You got me, sister. When we're doing an Inference problem (MBT or MSS) and we get a stimulus this dense, it's usually very hard to predict an answer, so we just read it a second time, slowly, for good comprehension and then see what the answers are offering us.

With each one, we'll just agnostically ask,

24.

If the statements in the passage are correct, which one of the following can be properly concluded from them?

When a human action is
No Way to Prove No Explanation
Without thinking too hard about the meaning of this sentence, we can tell this isn't derivable from the paragraph because it offers a conditional rule that has No Explanation on the right side of the arrow. There is no language anywhere in the paragraph that could be used to prove that an action has no explanation. It even says that every human action potentially has an explanation. We were given a conditional rule that had "action justified" as its trigger: Justified ? person has sufficient reasons action for the action In order to then get from that outcome to the outcome shown in this answer choice, we would have to feel good about making this move: person has sufficient ? action has no reasons for action explanation But we weren't given anything that sounds like that move.
2% picked this
If there are any reasons
No Way to Prove Rational
Without thinking too hard about the meaning of this sentence, we can tell this isn't derivable from the paragraph because it offers a conditional rule that has Rational on the right side of the arrow. The only information we have about rational actions comes from the last sentence, where Rational is the left side of the arrow. Thus, that rule is useless when it comes to proving Rational on the right side of the arrow, as this answer is doing.
18% picked this
Some psychologists believe that the
Too Strong: never
We only hear about many psychologists who think that often a justification is not part of the explanation. That's all we know about psychologists, so we can't prove that any of them think that a justification is never an essential part of the explanation.
14% picked this
There are actions whose causes
Out of Scope: cannot be discovered
The only support we would have for the idea that some actions have causes that can never be discovered is that the 2nd sentence says, Every human action potentially has an explanation; that is, with sufficient knowledge it would be possible to give an accurate description of the causes of that action. But that sentence isn't saying that "some causes can never be discovered". The author may think that some causes never will be discovered. But, she believes if you did have sufficient knowledge, it would be possible to accurately describe the causes of every human action.
10% picked this
Correct
If any human actions are
Why this is right
When an action is rational, we're told in the final sentence, it means that the justification is an essential part of the explanation. If we substitute-in the definitions we were provided for those two words, we could say that, the [sufficient reasons for the action] are an essential part of [an accurate description of the causes of the action]. In other words, for rational actions, if someone were to ask, "Hey, what caused that action?" an essential part of the answer would involve the reasons for the action. Hence, when actions are rational, we're saying that reasons were an essential part of the cause for an action.
Skill tested: Must be True · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
56% picked this

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