Question 1

Passage
Let us consider a widely accepted principle, what is called the "Principle of Voter Rationality."  It states that rationally motivated members of a democratic society ought to vote, as it is in their own best interest to do so.  The idea behind this principle is remarkably simple, of course: rationally motivated people ought to do whatever is in their own best interest.  Democratic societies provide citizens with the opportunity to exercise their will through the process of elections.  Rationally motivated citizens ought to vote, then, because electing candidates who will act on their behalf is in their own best interest.  If true, the principle elegantly justifies the scaffolding that upholds democracy itself: citizen engagement with the democratic process.As it turns out, there are excellent reasons to reject this principle.  Notice that the probability that any single vote will have an impact on the outcome of an election decreases as the number of voters increases.  In nationwide elections in democratic societies, the probability that any one vote will change the outcome of an election is infinitesimally small; so small, in fact, that a modest estimate for presidential elections in the US puts this probability at roughly one in one hundred million.  For all practical purposes, it is true to say that any single person's decision to vote will not affect the outcome of an election.Citizens who are rationally motivated in the relevant sense, when deciding whether to vote in an election, must weigh the potential benefits of voting against its known costs.  And there are many such costs: the loss of one's personal time, frustration caused by long lines at the polling station, the energy needed to sufficiently educate oneself about candidates' policies, and so on.  Because the probability that one's vote will have any significant impact on the outcome of the election is so minuscule, however, citizens can be practically certain that the costs of voting will outweigh its potential benefits.  Therefore, contra the Principle of Voter Rationality, citizens must conclude that it is not in their best interest to participate in the democratic process…Moreover, if we are willing to assume, in the way the principle does, that democratic citizens are rationally motivated, then, given a sufficiently large population of citizens who deliberate about whether to engage in voting behavior, the democratic process should break down.  For each citizen should find that he or she ought to abstain from participating in this process due to the aforementioned reasons…In truth, the democratic process is fully intact.  The problem with the Principle of Voter Rationality is that it assumes, falsely, that voting behavior is "rationally motivated" when and only when it is done for the purpose of influencing the outcome of an election.  But other sources of justification are available.  As I see it, it is a commitment to the principles of democracy itself that should compel rational citizens, independently of whether it furthers their personal interests, to participate in the democratic process.  For with such a commitment comes a civic duty to prevent the breakdown of one's own democracy and, with this, comes the justification for voting behavior.But what can be said about the nature of "civic duties," and why should we suppose that there are any such duties in the first place?  For my part, I believe that a democratic government's policies and its citizens' civic duty to vote derive from the more general obligation upon man to help his fellow citizen, to increase the welfare of others with no expectation of a reward, a duty for altruism…
-Based on the passage, a comparison between Sarah's psychic readings and the hotline's psychic readings is most like a comparison between:

Accepted Answer

A)  wondering whether a rumor is true and spreading a rumor whether or not it is true.
B)  suspecting a signature is a forgery and forging a signature on a contract.
C)  confusing a rock for gold and painting rocks to pass them off as gold.
D)  guessing that a company's value will fall and slandering a company to hurt its value.

Question 2

Passage
First of all, the notion that more than one author was responsible for the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey may fail to account adequately for the artistic unity and linguistic cohesion that mark these two works.  The idea of dual authorship instead privileges the inconsistencies between the texts stressed by late 19th- and early 20th-century scholars who suggested that the two epics are not, in fact, the work of a single poetic genius.  The promulgation of this theory served to undermine an earlier fundamentalist faith in a consensus from antiquity: one and only one poet called Homer authored both poems.Second of all, even if more than one author existed under the guise of Homer, there is no denying that these epics represent the culmination of a long tradition of oral poetry-specifically, oral verse concerning the Trojan War.  The existence of this oral tradition has sometimes been used to speculate that the texts we have of the Iliad and the Odyssey were merely strung together from shorter poems about warrior-heroes sung by itinerant bards to regale the aristocratic courts of ancient Greece.  In this context, the name "Homer" has been explained as a generic designation signifying either a group of ancient singer-poets or an imaginary author to whom a collective body of oral poetry was attributed.That epic poems of more than 12,000 lines could have been recited from memory has been well documented.  Research undertaken at the beginning of the 20th century identified singers in the Balkans who could perform monumental epic poems from memory.  These performers seemed to have memorized discrete episodes or sections of poetry, arranging these as they recited.  Since then, it has been almost universally recognized that any theory about Homeric authorship must accommodate the oral tradition.Today many scholars find it unlikely that the same individual composed both Homeric epics.  Compellingly, even the ancient consensus that there was just one author cannot be traced further back than about 520 BCE when the two poems-which had been committed to writing in their recognizable form sometime after the introduction of the alphabet to Greece in the 8th century BCE-were recited by bards at the festival of Athena.  Prior to this, there had already been some controversy regarding the authorship of the poems.  In particular, an alternative tradition claimed that the Odyssey had been written by the poet Melesigenes, who then appropriated the name Homer.Likewise, leading Homericists now conjecture more specifically that one poet wrote the Iliad and that the Odyssey was composed sometime later by a second.  This theory rests on two basic premises:  (1)  Each poem has its own well-defined and unified design that discredits the possibility it is merely a pastiche of shorter poems passed down orally and finally stabilized in written form; and (2)  differences between the poems seem to point to separate authors.  Scholars cite not only linguistic inconsistencies, including differences in vocabulary, but also discrepancies in background, underlying beliefs, ethics, and even geographical orientation.  Intriguingly, researchers have also found evidence in the Odyssey of imitation of passages from the Iliad.A few skeptics, however, continue to insist that the stylistic similarities between the two epics ascribed to Homer are too striking to support a theory of multiple authorship.  Far from clinging to idealistic notions of artistry or outdated modes of manuscript study, these single-author theorists have combined information technology and analysis of linguistic style to produce a legitimate body of evidence they can marshal against the prevailing trend.
West, Martin. "The Homeric Question Today," in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol 155. No. 4, December 2011.
-Based on the author's claims in Paragraph 2, which of the following is most like the Begriffsschrift notation in Frege's logicist project?

Accepted Answer

A)  A scientific boundary, clearly separating one scientific discipline from another
B)  An observational tool, meant to provide researchers with new empirical data
C)  A flow chart, used to map out the organizational structure of a business corporation
D)  A metaphor, which communicates an important truth in figurative terms

Question 3

Passage
At the forefront of the modernist poetry movement were T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and others, such as Ezra Pound, whose injunction, "Make it new!" characterized their artistic approach.  Hindered by the same internal conflict plaguing many intellectuals within the cultural upheavals of the time, these poets felt, on one level, that old linguistic certainties had evaporated and new forms must be embraced.  Yet many of them, particularly the later modernist poets, maintained a sentimental attachment to all that had been lost from the cultural certitude of earlier eras, their despondency reflected in much of their work.  At the periphery of the movement were E. E. Cummings and Robert Frost, who were named among modernist poets largely for the chronological classification of their poetry and not necessarily for their style or means of artistic production.A self-titled "poet" and "painter," Cummings was beyond his time in his efforts to innovate.  He would become well known for his erratic applications of punctuation and syntax, and, later, for his visual configurations of words.  Much of Cummings' writing also used idiosyncratic similes and metaphors.  This style, which later evolved to include symbolism and allegory, caused even some of the most progressive modernists to dismiss his work as eccentric, self-indulgent, and lacking depth.  However, as a quintessential dissenter, Cummings remained unaffected by the reactions of his contemporaries and focused more on creating a graphic effect with words.To Cummings, the artist was not one who discerns or describes, but one who feels.  He often contrasted the "doing" of others-scientists in particular-to the "being" of the artist.  Compared to what he defined as the "nonartist," Cummings held that the artist must be original, self-reliant, and free to live according to his or her own truth.  For Cummings, this meant disentanglement from any shackles of societal standards, ranging from the man-made notions of reality and reason to traditional literary conventions.Contrarily, Frost believed that a true poet could-and should-achieve poetic excellence without resorting to what he described as the "new ways of being new."  Consequently, his poetry was composed of ordinary sounds that derived from conventional language.  Although many contemporary critics dismissed his work as overly simplistic, or "too near the level of talk," Frost remained unperturbed by such views, holding that poetry sprang from the natural intonations of a person's voice and should remain true to traditional forms.Frost claimed that "a poem begins with delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down."  This conception of a poem led Frost to elucidate that, behind the scenes, the poet must always approach writing intimately and organically, allowing the words to originate seamlessly from "a lump in the throat, a homesickness, a loneliness."  Provoking both poet and reader to recollect an oft-distant truth lingering in some obscure region of the brain, this practice culminates in wisdom that may be profound or just a momentary reprieve from the world.Uncompromising and not always popular, Frost and Cummings nevertheless mingled with the literary elite and developed long-term acquaintances with Ezra Pound, who especially championed Frost's literary career.  Each shared with other modernist poets an opposition to the scientific rationalism and commercialist vulgarity that had infiltrated Western culture after the Industrial Revolution.  Yet both poets also continued to exhibit a commitment to the role of nonconformist and favored aspects of the Romantic poetry movement-namely, the significance of the individual's experience and the rejection of societal scrutiny-over the tormenting self-doubt that had beset their peers.  Thus, even in an age defined by its pure and absolute originality, Frost and Cummings occupied unique positions within the modernist poetry movement.
-Suppose that new government regulations require the elimination of financial compensation for egg donors.  How would this affect the author's claims about concerns facing the oocyte market?

Accepted Answer

A)  It would support the claim that there is little research on the long-term risks and effects of egg donation on women's health.
B)  It would support the claim that government regulations would make women vulnerable to exploitation or coercion.
C)  It would weaken the claim that ethical issues would remain even if a global register of egg donors were established.
D)  It would weaken the claim that the global demand for egg donors continues to increase.

Question 4

Passage
Although the primary canon in the history of political thought largely ignores the views of Immanuel Kant, he nevertheless was as important a political thinker as Rousseau, Locke, or even Aristotle.  Working in the context of the Prussian Enlightenment, Kant championed the idea that the only innate right of human beings is freedom.  Fittingly, the centerpiece of his political theory is that freedom can be the only basis for a just political state.A political theory that advances freedom as its core tenet may appear inherently problematic.  The very existence of a political state would seem to require limitations on the freedoms of those within it.  However, this presents no serious problem for Kant's theory.  The Kantian notion of political freedom-which stands in stark contrast to the notion of transcendental freedom widely associated with Kant's nonpolitical writings-is restricted to the external relations between human persons.  In its political sense, freedom refers to the innate right of every person to independence from being constrained by another's choice.  In other words, every person has the innate right to make choices freely but only so long as these choices do not interfere with those of others.  Laws that do not allow for political freedom are forbidden in Kant's view because within a just civil condition, the promulgation of a law requires that an entire people agree to be subjected to it.There are more substantive problems facing Kant's political theory.  Most notable among these concerns is Kant's promotion of welfare legislation.  As he says, "The government is authorized to constrain the wealthy to provide the means of sustenance to those who are unable to provide for even their most necessary and basic needs."  Given Kant's notion of political freedom, to enact such legislation would be catastrophic.  Welfare legislation violates Kant's own criterion regarding laws promulgated within a just civil condition: Governmental interference of this kind is a prime example of legislation on which an entire people will be divided.This was an egregious error on Kant's part.  At the same time, proponents of a Kantian conception of the state need neither embrace this result nor dismiss the possibility of consistently incorporating welfare legislation into their preferred brand of political theory.  Although Kant did not explicitly advocate it himself, a Kantian may hold that public provision of welfare is necessary for the state to fulfill its primary function-namely, protecting the liberties of its citizens.  For instance, if failing to adopt welfare legislation would threaten the continued existence, security, or stability of the state, then Kantians may justify such legislation on the grounds that it serves an instrumentally necessary role in upholding the fundamental aims and principles of Kantianism itself.  It is interesting to note that followers of Kant will likely have independent reasons to accept something along these lines.  Kant himself held that rational entities-such as persons, corporations, and states-have a duty of self-preservation, and thus are obligated to take measures to ensure their continued existence, security, and stability.There are still other issues surrounding a Kantian theory of the state.  These will need to be dealt with separately, but they should not go overlooked.  Breaking down the barriers that leave Kant outside the primary canon of political theory is a laudable task, which will take much effort to accomplish.
-What is the primary purpose of the passage?

Accepted Answer

A)  To illustrate that Kant's political theory has been largely ignored in favor of other political thinkers
B)  To provide arguments in favor of adopting a Kantian view of the state
C)  To defend a Kantian conception of the state from two of its perceived shortcomings
D)  To show that political scholars should pay attention to Kant's political theory

Question 5

Passage
An untamed but generative masculine spirit, ubiquitous though often elusive, haunts the interconnection of humans with nature.  Among its most prominent images are the carved faces, formed from leaves or sprouting them, that peer out from medieval church ceilings and walls.  At once comic and forbidding, this foliate head is neither a gargoyle nor a merely decorative motif, but an archetype whose history stretches as deeply into the mists of time and myth as the roots of a tree.  Nevertheless, it was only as recently as 1939 that British scholar Julia Hamilton Somerset, better known as Lady Raglan, noting a carved face of entwined leaves in a church in southeast Wales, initiated a study of similar images and christened this mysterious male presence the "Green Man."Like many mythological figures, the Green Man is syncretic, interweaving several images and themes or variations on a pattern.  He is, as writer John Matthews claims, "far larger than any simple attempt to define him."  Chiefly, the Green Man symbolizes the union of humans and nature.  Indissolubly linked with the vegetative cycle and the agricultural year, he exudes vitality and fertility and signals both material and spiritual abundance.  Whether as the foliage-covered King of the May Day, also called Jack-in-the-Green, or as the King of the Harvest, John Barleycorn, the Green Man has been an indispensable element of traditional European village celebrations.  He is Keeper of the Forest as well as woodwose, the wild man of the woods, and is sometimes recognized as the consort of Mother Nature.Green Man images can be found in mosaics and carvings from the early Roman Empire.  Originally a pagan icon, the Green Man was incorporated into early Christian iconography, reaching a zenith of architectural popularity in Europe from the eleventh through the fifteenth century.  Notably, Chartres Cathedral in France, built in 1194, features 70 foliate heads, while in Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, constructed in 1446, no fewer than 103 such heads can be counted.  The Green Man was also known farther east; for instance, near Hatra in present-day Iraq, an imposing leafy countenance stares out from the façade of an ancient temple.The Green Man's lineage is multifaceted.  In the West he is a variant of Dionysus, the god of the vine who dies and is reborn.  Indeed, the fifth-century BCE statue of a leaf-clad Dionysus or Bacchus in Naples, Italy, is perhaps his oldest surviving image, although Dionysus may himself descend from the green-skinned Egyptian god Osiris who likewise dies and rises.  The Green Man is thought to be related to the rustic Greco-Roman deities Pan and Silvanus, and, more speculatively, to Cernunnos, the Celtic horned god of the hunt and lord of the animals.  In the East this mythic being manifests in the figure of Al-Khidir, the Verdant or Green One who is a spiritual guide of heroes in the Koran.Green Man figures also pervade Western literature, which was influenced at its origin by the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh and its character of Enkidu, a wild, shaggy nature man fashioned by the gods as a counterpart to the young King Gilgamesh.  Later the medieval tales of King Arthur feature the baffling Green Knight, who, like the eastern Al-Khidir, is a warrior guide.  In the fifteenth century, the Green Man reemerges as Robin Hood; in the twentieth century, J. M. Barrie's eternally youthful Peter Pan is tellingly "clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that flow from trees."In Matthews' view, the Green Man is the embodiment of "unvanquishable greenness."  This perspective might explain the recurrence of his image and its recent adoption by environmental awareness movements as an assurance of ecological renewal.
-Based on the passage, the childhood perspective of the Samburu woman toward the school girl in her village is most similar to the perspective of:

Accepted Answer

A)  a sheltered student meeting diverse groups of people in college.
B)  a community leader shunning a social transgressor.
C)  an outsider seeking acceptance from an in-group.
D)  a foreign traveler encountering an unfamiliar religious ceremony.

Question 6

Passage
The fledgling public television industry faced an uncertain future in the late 1960s.  Near the end of his presidency, Democrat Lyndon Johnson allocated $20 million to create the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  In 1969, however, his newly elected Republican successor Richard Nixon hoped to reduce government spending and was considering a cut of 50% or more to that appropriation.  Before a final decision was made, public broadcasting representatives were invited to appear before Congress to make their case for the full funding.  One of their leaders, future Public Broadcasting Service president Hartford N. Gunn, Jr., asked TV personality Fred Rogers to join him in testifying as a key advocate for public television.As the creator and host of the show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Rogers embodied moral values, a deep sense of purpose, and concern for the welfare of children, all of which would later make him one of the most beloved figures in television history.  At the time of the congressional hearing, however, Rogers' show had aired nationally for only a year.  Although highly regarded by his current audience, Rogers did not yet possess the level of recognition he would eventually obtain.  His televised appearance before the Sub-Committee on Communications would be many Americans' first time seeing him.  In addition, despite having studied early childhood development under such prominent psychologists as Benjamin Spock and Margaret McFarland, Rogers was not widely known as an expert in that field.  In short, Rogers was an unusual figure to be chosen to testify before Congress.  Rogers' biographer Maxwell King describes Gunn's decision to depend so heavily on Rogers' testimony as "a pretty big gamble."Chairing the sub-committee hearing was Democratic senator John Pastore of Rhode Island, portrayed by King as "a blunt, no-nonsense social conservative who shared the Republican interest in keeping federal spending in line."  Pastore had also been critical of the television industry for what he saw as its promotion of immorality.  Although those criticisms had been leveled primarily at commercial programs, Pastore's views certainly couldn't have helped the case that Rogers needed to make.  The unproven nature of public television as a recent enterprise added an additional hurdle to securing the funding.Nevertheless, despite the odds stacked against him, Fred Rogers greatly impressed Pastore and the rest of the sub-committee.  Rather than giving the type of formal testimony that might have been expected at such a hearing, Rogers simply spoke earnestly about what, in his view, made public television so important.  He shared Pastore's worries about television's content, and was especially concerned about television geared toward children.  Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which addressed children directly and acknowledged their unique perspective, was based on Rogers' vision of public programming as a positive social force.  As he explained, taking children's problems seriously and showing them that their lives can be understood and managed makes a profound difference in the type of people they become and the society they help to create.The highlight of the testimony came when Rogers recited the lyrics to one of the songs from his show, which had been inspired by a child's question about how to deal with anger.  The song acknowledges the frustrations and fears of childhood while affirming each child's ability to control his or her feelings and behavior.  Rogers' simple but encouraging words clearly moved the sub-committee members, including Senator Pastore, who responded: "Looks like you just earned the twenty million dollars."  Hartford Gunn's gamble had paid off.  In an interesting twist of affairs, Pastore himself testified the following year at the White House Conference on Children-an event chaired by none other than Fred Rogers.
-Which of the following claims, if true, would most challenge the passage idea that after taking account of its larger size but more hospitable terrain, Nicaragua was a better site for a canal than Panama (Paragraph 5) ?

Accepted Answer

A)  The Panamanian landscape contains greater natural variation than that of Nicaragua.
B)  In most regions, land elevation above sea level is higher in Nicaragua than in Panama.
C)  A sizeable lake occupies a critical portion of Nicaragua's land mass.
D)  The government of Nicaragua was facing substantial civil unrest among its citizenry.

Question 7

Passage
An untamed but generative masculine spirit, ubiquitous though often elusive, haunts the interconnection of humans with nature.  Among its most prominent images are the carved faces, formed from leaves or sprouting them, that peer out from medieval church ceilings and walls.  At once comic and forbidding, this foliate head is neither a gargoyle nor a merely decorative motif, but an archetype whose history stretches as deeply into the mists of time and myth as the roots of a tree.  Nevertheless, it was only as recently as 1939 that British scholar Julia Hamilton Somerset, better known as Lady Raglan, noting a carved face of entwined leaves in a church in southeast Wales, initiated a study of similar images and christened this mysterious male presence the "Green Man."Like many mythological figures, the Green Man is syncretic, interweaving several images and themes or variations on a pattern.  He is, as writer John Matthews claims, "far larger than any simple attempt to define him."  Chiefly, the Green Man symbolizes the union of humans and nature.  Indissolubly linked with the vegetative cycle and the agricultural year, he exudes vitality and fertility and signals both material and spiritual abundance.  Whether as the foliage-covered King of the May Day, also called Jack-in-the-Green, or as the King of the Harvest, John Barleycorn, the Green Man has been an indispensable element of traditional European village celebrations.  He is Keeper of the Forest as well as woodwose, the wild man of the woods, and is sometimes recognized as the consort of Mother Nature.Green Man images can be found in mosaics and carvings from the early Roman Empire.  Originally a pagan icon, the Green Man was incorporated into early Christian iconography, reaching a zenith of architectural popularity in Europe from the eleventh through the fifteenth century.  Notably, Chartres Cathedral in France, built in 1194, features 70 foliate heads, while in Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, constructed in 1446, no fewer than 103 such heads can be counted.  The Green Man was also known farther east; for instance, near Hatra in present-day Iraq, an imposing leafy countenance stares out from the façade of an ancient temple.The Green Man's lineage is multifaceted.  In the West he is a variant of Dionysus, the god of the vine who dies and is reborn.  Indeed, the fifth-century BCE statue of a leaf-clad Dionysus or Bacchus in Naples, Italy, is perhaps his oldest surviving image, although Dionysus may himself descend from the green-skinned Egyptian god Osiris who likewise dies and rises.  The Green Man is thought to be related to the rustic Greco-Roman deities Pan and Silvanus, and, more speculatively, to Cernunnos, the Celtic horned god of the hunt and lord of the animals.  In the East this mythic being manifests in the figure of Al-Khidir, the Verdant or Green One who is a spiritual guide of heroes in the Koran.Green Man figures also pervade Western literature, which was influenced at its origin by the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh and its character of Enkidu, a wild, shaggy nature man fashioned by the gods as a counterpart to the young King Gilgamesh.  Later the medieval tales of King Arthur feature the baffling Green Knight, who, like the eastern Al-Khidir, is a warrior guide.  In the fifteenth century, the Green Man reemerges as Robin Hood; in the twentieth century, J. M. Barrie's eternally youthful Peter Pan is tellingly "clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that flow from trees."In Matthews' view, the Green Man is the embodiment of "unvanquishable greenness."  This perspective might explain the recurrence of his image and its recent adoption by environmental awareness movements as an assurance of ecological renewal.
-Given the information in the passage, the author most likely believes that the way we process visual information:

Accepted Answer

A)  had been an important factor in psychology long before Rorschach.
B)  was initially overemphasized by Rorschach.
C)  is an integral element of a person's psychological makeup.
D)  interferes with the psychologist's ability to gain insight into an individual's personality.

Question 8

Passage
Certain schools of thought that arose in the mid- to late 20th century and have since been labeled "poststructuralist" are well known for their propensity to "problematize," "destabilize," or "radicalize" the concepts of previous thinkers.  For example, the controversial French poststructuralist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan sought to reenvision the concept, first introduced by Freud in the early 1900s, of the ego as the autonomous agent of the psyche.  Hence in his salient 1949 essay, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the 'I' Function as Revealed in the Psychoanalytic Experience," Lacan variously describes the formation and consequent function of the ego as a schismatic event of misrecognition, an epiphenomenon of narcissism, and a process of dialectical tension.  The latter sets up an interchange between identification and alienation, generating confusion between being a subject as opposed to an object, between self and other, between what is "me" and "not me."The drama of the ego's emergence in what Lacan has designated "the Mirror Stage" explains its contrary nature.  Somewhere between 6 and 18 months of age, an infant will likely encounter his (or her)  own reflection in a mirror.  At this phase of development, the child lacks any sense of a unified self but, encouraged by an adult, is able to recognize his reflection in the glass and, at the same time, comes to understand that the specular image looking back at him is, in fact, not himself.  In other words, the image provides the infant with the first glimpse of himself as an object and specifically as "other."  According to Lacan, the initial fascination and pleasure the child experiences upon self-recognition dissolves into confusion at being unable to distinguish between what is and what is not himself.  Therefore, such recognition amounts to a kind of misrecognition, the French term for which, méconnaissance, implies an essential misunderstanding or lack of knowledge.Furthermore, while the reflection in the mirror appears coherent, coordinated, and whole, the child himself continues to perceive his body as uncoordinated and fragmentary, resulting in a profound sense of incongruity and disharmony.  By exuding mastery and harmony, the mirror image serves as a gestalt; it holds up an "Ideal-I" or future self that promises completeness and perfection-a condition, Lacan believes, that is ultimately unattainable, though we will likely spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of it.  Overall, the infant's reaction to the image or Ideal-I is narcissistic: he feels both attraction to it as a model and aggression toward it as a rival.Alienation, lack, absence, and conflict are thus constitutive of the Lacanian ego.  The child's image and, hence, the emerging ego mark an ontological gap that serves as a repository for the projections and desires, whether conscious or unconscious, of parents and others.  Consequently, this image is, as Adrian Johnston points out, "always already overwritten" with words that are not the child's own.  For Johnston, the ego could more properly be described as "a coagulation of inter- and trans-subjective alien influences."  Rather than a "fluid and autonomous subject," it becomes a rigid and "heteronomous" entity.  Derived from the desires of others, this ego is, in Lacanian terms, "extimate," or internally exterior.  It is an irreducible contradiction, both alien and alienating.This ego paradigm diverges from the more familiar and cohesive Freudian notion of the ego as the sovereign organizer of the personality, the rational mediator between internal drives and social pressures that in the interests of self-preservation will also resort to deceptions and defense mechanisms.  From a Lacanian perspective, the ego is intrinsically and irreparably divided; it functions mainly to support the fictional construct we identify-or rather, misrecognize-as the "self."
-What function is performed in the passage by Truss' claim that employing a semicolon can represent a compliment from the author to the reader (Paragraph 3) ?

Accepted Answer

A)  It discredits the notion that semicolons are a cause of confusion.
B)  It highlights a widely acknowledged justification for extensive semicolon use.
C)  It establishes that semicolons can help writers to attract readers.
D)  It reveals a potentially complex effect of semicolon use on the reader.

Question 9

Passage
Throughout the twentieth century, the performer-spectator dynamic has been challenged both in artistic practice and from a theoretical perspective.  Contextual Futurists, nonsensical Dadaists, and the surreal avant-garde theatrical experiments upended the conventional notion of passive spectatorship, paving the way for performers to disrupt the invisible wall between the artist and audience altogether.  Most scholarly attention, however, has traditionally been directed toward one-way theatrical practices by which performers engage, transform, and heighten the bodily state of the audience through a framework of communal "felt-experience," and not vice versa.The actors on stage are ostensibly the central object of attention, yet their communication with those in attendance is not solely a one-way discourse.  After the curtain falls at the end of a performance, it is common to hear professional performers commentate on audience reaction:  sometimes the spectators were "attuned"; at other times they seemed "aloof."  Occasionally, performers feel as if they "captured" the audience; at other times, they perceive that they "lost touch" with the viewers entirely.  One could say that this jargon is merely an oversimplified and closed communication that reduces the true complexity and aesthetic dimensions of the theater experience.Nevertheless, performers are ultimately the vessels responsible for detecting and absorbing the moods, attitudes, and emotions of individuals, and these aspects are vital to the apparent success or failure of the performative process.  One day, actors might find the audience energetic, welcoming, and appreciative; the next day, they may find a stiff, critical, and disconnected crowd, even when performing in the same production with unchanged levels of enthusiasm.  In some instances, a single audience may be unmoved, regardless of how well a show is performed.  In concert with this insight, the language used by artists from across the globe to portray such audience encounters is notably similar.  Their predilection for tactile idiomatic expressions when describing the performer-audience connection is perfectly captured in these remarks from a well-known stage actor:"The level of attention the audience gives to what is happening on stage provides a certain quality of stillness that makes it possible for a performer to know whether the audience is attuned or not.  However, for the audience to be 'with' the performer, it must embrace a state of tension and immerse itself in the profundity of the performance…it's a very 'tangible' moment-it's all I can find as a word."Because the audience is the proclaimed foundation of a theatrical event, a staged play aims to affect the audience, usually by "capturing" the viewers in some poignant manner.  According to this paradigm, there can be no performance without an audience.  Despite this, the presence of spectators does not guarantee that a meaningful emotional, or affective, exchange will transpire.  Such collective encounters in a shared space and time present only the possibility-for connection or disconnection; and, accordingly, an audience member must be physically present and willing to be affectively influenced.The audience serves an integral function in the performance:  it activates, intensifies, and amplifies the circulation of emotional affect in a communal social space.  Individually and collectively, each spectator is able to participate in the intrinsically variable theatrical plot.  Affect is thereby experienced simultaneously through action, thought, and perception by both the artist and the audience.  This mutual "transmission of affect" induces a corporeal sentiment that ultimately resonates as a palpably emotional atmosphere.  Entertainers can only know if the audience is "present" to the degree that they also embrace the mutual tension of the experience.  In this way, the performer dutifully influences the audience, and the audience, in essence, "re-affects" the stage.
Adapted from Pais, A, Affective Resonance as the Function of the Audience. Published 2016.
-Assume a new actor is scheduled to appear in the musical "West Side Story."  The author of the passage would probably say it is most important for the inexperienced actor to:

Accepted Answer

A)  discuss audience engagement with fellow actors after the first performance.
B)  comprehend theater and the role of the audience from a historical perspective.
C)  assimilate an uncomfortable silence from the audience during a riveting scene.
D)  become accustomed to a derisive audience after making a blunder on stage.

Question 10

Passage
An untamed but generative masculine spirit, ubiquitous though often elusive, haunts the interconnection of humans with nature.  Among its most prominent images are the carved faces, formed from leaves or sprouting them, that peer out from medieval church ceilings and walls.  At once comic and forbidding, this foliate head is neither a gargoyle nor a merely decorative motif, but an archetype whose history stretches as deeply into the mists of time and myth as the roots of a tree.  Nevertheless, it was only as recently as 1939 that British scholar Julia Hamilton Somerset, better known as Lady Raglan, noting a carved face of entwined leaves in a church in southeast Wales, initiated a study of similar images and christened this mysterious male presence the "Green Man."Like many mythological figures, the Green Man is syncretic, interweaving several images and themes or variations on a pattern.  He is, as writer John Matthews claims, "far larger than any simple attempt to define him."  Chiefly, the Green Man symbolizes the union of humans and nature.  Indissolubly linked with the vegetative cycle and the agricultural year, he exudes vitality and fertility and signals both material and spiritual abundance.  Whether as the foliage-covered King of the May Day, also called Jack-in-the-Green, or as the King of the Harvest, John Barleycorn, the Green Man has been an indispensable element of traditional European village celebrations.  He is Keeper of the Forest as well as woodwose, the wild man of the woods, and is sometimes recognized as the consort of Mother Nature.Green Man images can be found in mosaics and carvings from the early Roman Empire.  Originally a pagan icon, the Green Man was incorporated into early Christian iconography, reaching a zenith of architectural popularity in Europe from the eleventh through the fifteenth century.  Notably, Chartres Cathedral in France, built in 1194, features 70 foliate heads, while in Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland, constructed in 1446, no fewer than 103 such heads can be counted.  The Green Man was also known farther east; for instance, near Hatra in present-day Iraq, an imposing leafy countenance stares out from the façade of an ancient temple.The Green Man's lineage is multifaceted.  In the West he is a variant of Dionysus, the god of the vine who dies and is reborn.  Indeed, the fifth-century BCE statue of a leaf-clad Dionysus or Bacchus in Naples, Italy, is perhaps his oldest surviving image, although Dionysus may himself descend from the green-skinned Egyptian god Osiris who likewise dies and rises.  The Green Man is thought to be related to the rustic Greco-Roman deities Pan and Silvanus, and, more speculatively, to Cernunnos, the Celtic horned god of the hunt and lord of the animals.  In the East this mythic being manifests in the figure of Al-Khidir, the Verdant or Green One who is a spiritual guide of heroes in the Koran.Green Man figures also pervade Western literature, which was influenced at its origin by the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh and its character of Enkidu, a wild, shaggy nature man fashioned by the gods as a counterpart to the young King Gilgamesh.  Later the medieval tales of King Arthur feature the baffling Green Knight, who, like the eastern Al-Khidir, is a warrior guide.  In the fifteenth century, the Green Man reemerges as Robin Hood; in the twentieth century, J. M. Barrie's eternally youthful Peter Pan is tellingly "clad in skeleton leaves and the juices that flow from trees."In Matthews' view, the Green Man is the embodiment of "unvanquishable greenness."  This perspective might explain the recurrence of his image and its recent adoption by environmental awareness movements as an assurance of ecological renewal.
-Based on passage information, at the time of his sudden death in 1922, Rorschach was most likely intending:

Accepted Answer

A)  to continue studying schizophrenia.
B)  to modify his research methods.
C)  to publish a second volume of Psychodiagnostics.
D)  to incorporate changes into the inkblot experiment.

Question 11

Passage
Certain schools of thought that arose in the mid- to late 20th century and have since been labeled "poststructuralist" are well known for their propensity to "problematize," "destabilize," or "radicalize" the concepts of previous thinkers.  For example, the controversial French poststructuralist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan sought to reenvision the concept, first introduced by Freud in the early 1900s, of the ego as the autonomous agent of the psyche.  Hence in his salient 1949 essay, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the 'I' Function as Revealed in the Psychoanalytic Experience," Lacan variously describes the formation and consequent function of the ego as a schismatic event of misrecognition, an epiphenomenon of narcissism, and a process of dialectical tension.  The latter sets up an interchange between identification and alienation, generating confusion between being a subject as opposed to an object, between self and other, between what is "me" and "not me."The drama of the ego's emergence in what Lacan has designated "the Mirror Stage" explains its contrary nature.  Somewhere between 6 and 18 months of age, an infant will likely encounter his (or her)  own reflection in a mirror.  At this phase of development, the child lacks any sense of a unified self but, encouraged by an adult, is able to recognize his reflection in the glass and, at the same time, comes to understand that the specular image looking back at him is, in fact, not himself.  In other words, the image provides the infant with the first glimpse of himself as an object and specifically as "other."  According to Lacan, the initial fascination and pleasure the child experiences upon self-recognition dissolves into confusion at being unable to distinguish between what is and what is not himself.  Therefore, such recognition amounts to a kind of misrecognition, the French term for which, méconnaissance, implies an essential misunderstanding or lack of knowledge.Furthermore, while the reflection in the mirror appears coherent, coordinated, and whole, the child himself continues to perceive his body as uncoordinated and fragmentary, resulting in a profound sense of incongruity and disharmony.  By exuding mastery and harmony, the mirror image serves as a gestalt; it holds up an "Ideal-I" or future self that promises completeness and perfection-a condition, Lacan believes, that is ultimately unattainable, though we will likely spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of it.  Overall, the infant's reaction to the image or Ideal-I is narcissistic: he feels both attraction to it as a model and aggression toward it as a rival.Alienation, lack, absence, and conflict are thus constitutive of the Lacanian ego.  The child's image and, hence, the emerging ego mark an ontological gap that serves as a repository for the projections and desires, whether conscious or unconscious, of parents and others.  Consequently, this image is, as Adrian Johnston points out, "always already overwritten" with words that are not the child's own.  For Johnston, the ego could more properly be described as "a coagulation of inter- and trans-subjective alien influences."  Rather than a "fluid and autonomous subject," it becomes a rigid and "heteronomous" entity.  Derived from the desires of others, this ego is, in Lacanian terms, "extimate," or internally exterior.  It is an irreducible contradiction, both alien and alienating.This ego paradigm diverges from the more familiar and cohesive Freudian notion of the ego as the sovereign organizer of the personality, the rational mediator between internal drives and social pressures that in the interests of self-preservation will also resort to deceptions and defense mechanisms.  From a Lacanian perspective, the ego is intrinsically and irreparably divided; it functions mainly to support the fictional construct we identify-or rather, misrecognize-as the "self."
-Based on the author's description, Thomas' behavior is most analogous to the behavior of which of the following groups?

Accepted Answer

A)  A scientific organization refuses to accept a research finding until it is subjected to additional peer review.
B)  A news outlet refuses to broadcast a story until it is confirmed by its own reporters.
C)  A political party refuses to pass legislation despite the public support for it.
D)  A law office refuses to believe in a client's innocence until additional evidence is discovered.

Question 12

Passage
At the forefront of the modernist poetry movement were T. S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and others, such as Ezra Pound, whose injunction, "Make it new!" characterized their artistic approach.  Hindered by the same internal conflict plaguing many intellectuals within the cultural upheavals of the time, these poets felt, on one level, that old linguistic certainties had evaporated and new forms must be embraced.  Yet many of them, particularly the later modernist poets, maintained a sentimental attachment to all that had been lost from the cultural certitude of earlier eras, their despondency reflected in much of their work.  At the periphery of the movement were E. E. Cummings and Robert Frost, who were named among modernist poets largely for the chronological classification of their poetry and not necessarily for their style or means of artistic production.A self-titled "poet" and "painter," Cummings was beyond his time in his efforts to innovate.  He would become well known for his erratic applications of punctuation and syntax, and, later, for his visual configurations of words.  Much of Cummings' writing also used idiosyncratic similes and metaphors.  This style, which later evolved to include symbolism and allegory, caused even some of the most progressive modernists to dismiss his work as eccentric, self-indulgent, and lacking depth.  However, as a quintessential dissenter, Cummings remained unaffected by the reactions of his contemporaries and focused more on creating a graphic effect with words.To Cummings, the artist was not one who discerns or describes, but one who feels.  He often contrasted the "doing" of others-scientists in particular-to the "being" of the artist.  Compared to what he defined as the "nonartist," Cummings held that the artist must be original, self-reliant, and free to live according to his or her own truth.  For Cummings, this meant disentanglement from any shackles of societal standards, ranging from the man-made notions of reality and reason to traditional literary conventions.Contrarily, Frost believed that a true poet could-and should-achieve poetic excellence without resorting to what he described as the "new ways of being new."  Consequently, his poetry was composed of ordinary sounds that derived from conventional language.  Although many contemporary critics dismissed his work as overly simplistic, or "too near the level of talk," Frost remained unperturbed by such views, holding that poetry sprang from the natural intonations of a person's voice and should remain true to traditional forms.Frost claimed that "a poem begins with delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down."  This conception of a poem led Frost to elucidate that, behind the scenes, the poet must always approach writing intimately and organically, allowing the words to originate seamlessly from "a lump in the throat, a homesickness, a loneliness."  Provoking both poet and reader to recollect an oft-distant truth lingering in some obscure region of the brain, this practice culminates in wisdom that may be profound or just a momentary reprieve from the world.Uncompromising and not always popular, Frost and Cummings nevertheless mingled with the literary elite and developed long-term acquaintances with Ezra Pound, who especially championed Frost's literary career.  Each shared with other modernist poets an opposition to the scientific rationalism and commercialist vulgarity that had infiltrated Western culture after the Industrial Revolution.  Yet both poets also continued to exhibit a commitment to the role of nonconformist and favored aspects of the Romantic poetry movement-namely, the significance of the individual's experience and the rejection of societal scrutiny-over the tormenting self-doubt that had beset their peers.  Thus, even in an age defined by its pure and absolute originality, Frost and Cummings occupied unique positions within the modernist poetry movement.
-If subsequent research revealed that there are no long-term health risks of egg donation, this would most directly address the ethical concern that:

Accepted Answer

A)  women donate eggs for the ultimate gain of others.
B)  the egg procurement industry transforms women's bodies into an economic resource.
C)  it is not apparent that consent is part of the egg donation process for some women.
D)  it is unclear that informed consent is part of the donation process.

Question 13

Passage
The fledgling public television industry faced an uncertain future in the late 1960s.  Near the end of his presidency, Democrat Lyndon Johnson allocated $20 million to create the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.  In 1969, however, his newly elected Republican successor Richard Nixon hoped to reduce government spending and was considering a cut of 50% or more to that appropriation.  Before a final decision was made, public broadcasting representatives were invited to appear before Congress to make their case for the full funding.  One of their leaders, future Public Broadcasting Service president Hartford N. Gunn, Jr., asked TV personality Fred Rogers to join him in testifying as a key advocate for public television.As the creator and host of the show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Rogers embodied moral values, a deep sense of purpose, and concern for the welfare of children, all of which would later make him one of the most beloved figures in television history.  At the time of the congressional hearing, however, Rogers' show had aired nationally for only a year.  Although highly regarded by his current audience, Rogers did not yet possess the level of recognition he would eventually obtain.  His televised appearance before the Sub-Committee on Communications would be many Americans' first time seeing him.  In addition, despite having studied early childhood development under such prominent psychologists as Benjamin Spock and Margaret McFarland, Rogers was not widely known as an expert in that field.  In short, Rogers was an unusual figure to be chosen to testify before Congress.  Rogers' biographer Maxwell King describes Gunn's decision to depend so heavily on Rogers' testimony as "a pretty big gamble."Chairing the sub-committee hearing was Democratic senator John Pastore of Rhode Island, portrayed by King as "a blunt, no-nonsense social conservative who shared the Republican interest in keeping federal spending in line."  Pastore had also been critical of the television industry for what he saw as its promotion of immorality.  Although those criticisms had been leveled primarily at commercial programs, Pastore's views certainly couldn't have helped the case that Rogers needed to make.  The unproven nature of public television as a recent enterprise added an additional hurdle to securing the funding.Nevertheless, despite the odds stacked against him, Fred Rogers greatly impressed Pastore and the rest of the sub-committee.  Rather than giving the type of formal testimony that might have been expected at such a hearing, Rogers simply spoke earnestly about what, in his view, made public television so important.  He shared Pastore's worries about television's content, and was especially concerned about television geared toward children.  Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, which addressed children directly and acknowledged their unique perspective, was based on Rogers' vision of public programming as a positive social force.  As he explained, taking children's problems seriously and showing them that their lives can be understood and managed makes a profound difference in the type of people they become and the society they help to create.The highlight of the testimony came when Rogers recited the lyrics to one of the songs from his show, which had been inspired by a child's question about how to deal with anger.  The song acknowledges the frustrations and fears of childhood while affirming each child's ability to control his or her feelings and behavior.  Rogers' simple but encouraging words clearly moved the sub-committee members, including Senator Pastore, who responded: "Looks like you just earned the twenty million dollars."  Hartford Gunn's gamble had paid off.  In an interesting twist of affairs, Pastore himself testified the following year at the White House Conference on Children-an event chaired by none other than Fred Rogers.
-If the passage description of the Panamanian revolution against Colombia (Paragraph 5)  is accurate, which of the following would NOT be a reasonable assumption?

Accepted Answer

A)  The Panamanians resented Colombia for allowing the French to build in their country
B)  Some Colombian soldiers were sympathetic to Amador's revolution
C)  The Colombian government recognized the potential for United States military intervention
D)  The United States favored Panamanian independence from Colombia

Question 14

Passage
The Aran Islands, a trio of carboniferous limestone slabs, likely more than 350 million years old, are situated at the mouth of Galway Bay off the western coast of Ireland, on what in ages past must have seemed the very periphery of the civilized world.  For those who have dared to test the habitability of these rocky fragments, one certainty has always awaited: challenge.  Indeed, the presumed prototype of the Aran economy has been one of bare subsistence, a veritable experiment in self-sufficiency, demanding resourcefulness, endurance, and, above all, austerity.Of the three isles, Inishmore, the largest and westernmost, whose length forms a 9-mile breakwater against the Atlantic, has perhaps also been the most economically diverse and certainly the most historically colorful.  The island hosted the first monastic communities of Ireland and withstood the blunt force of Viking raiders and, centuries later, Cromwellian soldiers.  Following these invasions, the population-and the economy along with it-managed to flourish despite a landscape whose barrenness offered an almost equal shortage of arable land and surface water.  In addition, Inishmore's prolonged growing season, the result of year-round moderate temperatures, afforded an exquisite irony: the flora and fauna it supported, a curious admixture of that which could be found in alpine, Mediterranean, and arctic climes, were wonders for the naturalist to behold but worthless to inhabitants seeking to sustain themselves on the land's bounty.  Nevertheless, the island has long been able to defy its hardscrabble character and has demonstrated a talent for economic self-reinvention, all the while retaining its image as pristine, primitive, and inhospitable.By the early 19th century, the denizens of Inishmore had learned to effectively counterbalance the meagerness of their island's natural resources by swiftly focusing on new and evermore efficient ways to exploit them.  For example, the abundance of seaweed off its shores supplied a remedy for the scarcity of soil.  Once most of the boulders were cleared away, the sand could be layered with the seaweed, which, as it rotted, transformed the granular matter into fertile earth in which common crops such as barley, rye, oats, and potatoes have since been cultivated.  More land also meant more livestock could be raised, and the grass-fed calves of the island are still prized by mainlanders.  Seaweed could also be harvested by the ton and burnt in kilns to produce kelp, the sale of which on the mainland continues to be a thriving, if seasonal, industry, often more reliable than fishing.This is not, however, to say that life on the Aran isles was ever easy; in fact, the lifestyle of the inhabitants demanded a delicate equilibrium, and in the face of economic marginality most households resorted to occupational plurality-to include any combination of fishing, agriculture, kelp-making, boat-making, fowling, textiles, and manual labor.  Yet, despite this ever-shifting quest for resources, life on Inishmore even in the 1800s was a far cry from that depicted in Robert J. Flaherty's self-styled documentary film of 1934, Man of Aran, which dramatized the islanders' daily existence as a never-ending and desperate struggle against the elements, particularly the constant apocalyptic threat of the sea.Eighty years later, this image of Aran life endures, perpetuating a myth that has arguably become a commodity as real as the Man of Aran sweater sold on Inishmore but typically knit elsewhere in Ireland-a symbol of the island's dual character, of its commercial nature that so patently contradicts its celebrated identity as isolated and self-sufficient.  Still, the persistence of this image of remoteness, exposure, and inexorable hardship, however fabricated or embellished, has helped the island reinvent its economy as one heavily reliant on the outside-particularly on a tourist industry that brings in as many as 2,000 visitors a day by ferry-rather than self-sufficient.
-The "economic marginality" and "occupational plurality" the author describes in Paragraph 4 constitute:

Accepted Answer

A)  a model of how job diversification can bolster economic stability.
B)  an example of how job growth can improve dire financial circumstances.
C)  an inevitable condition of an island economy.
D)  an optimum situation for economic self-sufficiency.

Question 15

Passage
In September 1940, near the tiny village of Montignac in the southwest region of France, a band of four youths and a dog accidentally stumbled upon the opening to a series of underground caverns whose walls were covered with prehistoric paintings.  Their monumental discovery unleashed a mystery that has continued to puzzle scholars: What function did these magnificent caves perform for the society that painted them?  One plausible theory, yet unproven, is that they constituted a kind of sacred space, perhaps a site for religious ceremonies.Decades of work recording and analyzing the contents of this labyrinthine underworld, which came to be called Lascaux, have yielded some clues.  Pollen testing, carbon-14 dating, and the examination of flint and bone tools within the caves have been used to calculate the time period during which these subterranean reaches were painted and served their function.  The paintings date from between 17,000 and 12,000 BCE, which places them within the Upper Paleolithic era.  More specifically, they belong to the Magdalenian period of the last ice age that preceded the dawn of the current geological epoch and the invention of agriculture.More than 2,000 paintings and symbols cover the insides of the caverns.  Approximately 900 of these depict horses, bison, stags, large felines, and hares, clearly reflecting a society of hunter-gatherers.  Various pigments, mainly red, yellow, and brown, were used.  By employing a novel method that took advantage of the edges and curvatures of the cave walls, the artists were able to give lifelike dimensions to these images and endow them with a sense of motion.  Nevertheless, the cave art of Lascaux suggests a purpose that goes beyond artistic expression.It is likely these chambers served as a sanctuary within which the paintings would have corresponded to the iconography of a temple.  Moreover, countless footprints shown to have belonged to adolescent males suggest that the caves may have hosted initiation rituals marking a boy's passage from childhood to maturity.  At this critical juncture, the youths would have traditionally been separated from their families by the adult males and put through frightening ordeals.  The boys might have been tattooed, confined, or presented with physical challenges.  The purpose of such traumas was to prepare the adolescent for the physical and psychological rigors of the hunt, the brutalities of warfare, and the inevitable trials of adulthood.  Theologian Karen Armstrong describes such experiences as triggering "a regressive disorganization of the personality" followed by "a constructive reorganization" of the individual's faculties.  In other words, the rites were meant to force the youth to call upon inner resources of which he was not yet aware, thereby inducing a kind of psychological death and rebirth.Lying deep within the earth, the caves would have provided the perfect container for these traumatic rites-a fact that became evident when Lascaux was opened to the public in 1948.  As mythologist Joseph Campbell recalled of his visit there, when the lights were out, all normal orientation and sense of time were suspended and "you were never in darker darkness in your life."  In primitive societies, descending into the darkness of the caves must have seemed like immersing oneself in what religious historian Mircea Eliade has termed "sacred time," a kind of dissociative state conducive to the deeply transformative experience of the initiate.  When illuminated against the blackness, the realistic murals would have become a moving spectacle that simulated the hunt, the wonder and gravity of which was forever imprinted upon the boys' psyches.
-Suppose that animal images painted on the flat surfaces of the cave seemed to move quickly when the initiates viewed them.  This information would most strongly oppose the passage claim that using the "edges and curvatures" of the cave wall:

Accepted Answer

A)  makes the images more realistic.
B)  is an innovative technique.
C)  gives shape to the painted figure.
D)  creates the illusion of movement.

Question 16

Passage
First of all, the notion that more than one author was responsible for the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey may fail to account adequately for the artistic unity and linguistic cohesion that mark these two works.  The idea of dual authorship instead privileges the inconsistencies between the texts stressed by late 19th- and early 20th-century scholars who suggested that the two epics are not, in fact, the work of a single poetic genius.  The promulgation of this theory served to undermine an earlier fundamentalist faith in a consensus from antiquity: one and only one poet called Homer authored both poems.Second of all, even if more than one author existed under the guise of Homer, there is no denying that these epics represent the culmination of a long tradition of oral poetry-specifically, oral verse concerning the Trojan War.  The existence of this oral tradition has sometimes been used to speculate that the texts we have of the Iliad and the Odyssey were merely strung together from shorter poems about warrior-heroes sung by itinerant bards to regale the aristocratic courts of ancient Greece.  In this context, the name "Homer" has been explained as a generic designation signifying either a group of ancient singer-poets or an imaginary author to whom a collective body of oral poetry was attributed.That epic poems of more than 12,000 lines could have been recited from memory has been well documented.  Research undertaken at the beginning of the 20th century identified singers in the Balkans who could perform monumental epic poems from memory.  These performers seemed to have memorized discrete episodes or sections of poetry, arranging these as they recited.  Since then, it has been almost universally recognized that any theory about Homeric authorship must accommodate the oral tradition.Today many scholars find it unlikely that the same individual composed both Homeric epics.  Compellingly, even the ancient consensus that there was just one author cannot be traced further back than about 520 BCE when the two poems-which had been committed to writing in their recognizable form sometime after the introduction of the alphabet to Greece in the 8th century BCE-were recited by bards at the festival of Athena.  Prior to this, there had already been some controversy regarding the authorship of the poems.  In particular, an alternative tradition claimed that the Odyssey had been written by the poet Melesigenes, who then appropriated the name Homer.Likewise, leading Homericists now conjecture more specifically that one poet wrote the Iliad and that the Odyssey was composed sometime later by a second.  This theory rests on two basic premises:  (1)  Each poem has its own well-defined and unified design that discredits the possibility it is merely a pastiche of shorter poems passed down orally and finally stabilized in written form; and (2)  differences between the poems seem to point to separate authors.  Scholars cite not only linguistic inconsistencies, including differences in vocabulary, but also discrepancies in background, underlying beliefs, ethics, and even geographical orientation.  Intriguingly, researchers have also found evidence in the Odyssey of imitation of passages from the Iliad.A few skeptics, however, continue to insist that the stylistic similarities between the two epics ascribed to Homer are too striking to support a theory of multiple authorship.  Far from clinging to idealistic notions of artistry or outdated modes of manuscript study, these single-author theorists have combined information technology and analysis of linguistic style to produce a legitimate body of evidence they can marshal against the prevailing trend.
West, Martin. "The Homeric Question Today," in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol 155. No. 4, December 2011.
-According to the author, both Frege and Russell:

Accepted Answer

A)  had an impact in fields beyond mathematical logic.
B)  produced innovative concepts that were later proven untenable.
C)  impeded advances in the field of mathematics.
D)  used linguistic inventions to initiate mathematical developments.

Question 17

Passage
Jorge Luis Borges' 1946 short story "On Exactitude in Science" plays with the well-known aphorism, "The map is not the territory."  In this paragraph-long fable, an empire's ambitious cartographers produce a map so spectacularly isomorphic it corresponds precisely in scale and detail with the kingdom it represents.  Perfect yet useless, the map is virtually indistinguishable from the landscape until it begins to decay.  In a 1981 treatise, Simulacra and Simulation, French sociologist Jean Baudrillard cites Borges' tale as "the finest allegory" of his own provocative proposition that, in the current era, we have lost the ability to distinguish between reality and its representation.  Thus, Baudrillard-known as an extreme cultural relativist and often mocked as "the high priest of postmodernism"-postulates that "it is no longer a question of either maps or territories"; rather, "[s]omething has disappeared: the sovereign difference, between one and the other," that, he laments, once "constituted the charm of abstraction."  Indeed, our postmodernist world is saturated with signs, symbols, and images that are never neutral or transparent but, by mediating reality, come to construct it.  Consequently, in a sinister twist on the story, Baudrillard can assert that "today it is the territory whose shreds slowly rot across the map."  As he elaborates, "[T]he territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it."  Instead, "[i]t is…the map that precedes the territory…that engenders the territory."  In other words, representation can be seen to precede, produce, and ultimately surpass reality.But how can a copy be the antecedent of an original?  How does an image become so alienated from reality?  In Baudrillard's scheme, signs are subject to degeneration.  Initially, a sign reflects reality, substituting for an original; like a carefully crafted counterfeit, it is a faithful but identifiable copy.  In the next stage, the sign devolves into a less faithful copy of the original, thus distorting what it represents and masking reality.  In its penultimate phase, the representation no longer pretends to be the original but now instead pretends to be a copy; hence, it masks an absence of reality and erodes the distinction between the real and representation.  For instance, when images are mass produced, they propagate, taking on a life of their own and diminishing the authoritative aura of the original.  In the final stage of the sign's devolution, it can claim "no relation to any reality whatsoever"; it no longer reflects or refers to reality but instead signifies nothing but signification.  It has become a pure simulation, a suspiciously specious semblance Baudrillard calls the simulacrum.In Baudrillardian theory, when the distinction between representation and reality, sign and referent, original and reproduction disintegrates, the real disappears; we are left with copies of copies that no longer have-or never had-an original.  What remains, then, is a "hyperreality" of simulacra and simulation.  So, Baudrillard maintains, "[s]imulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being, or substance....  It is no longer a question of imitation, nor duplication, nor even parody."  It is instead a question of substitution, of "substituting the signs of the real for the real."  As one writer describes it, "The simulation is no longer a reflection of reality, nor a reference to it, but a creation of a new real by models that are not based on reality."  This new real may be genetically engineered, as with cloning, or possibly computer generated.  Even something as essential as currency has been progressively replaced, first by checks and then by credit and debit cards, until finally only numbers, divorced from any concrete reality, are exchanged on money transfer apps.  Likewise, as reality dissolves into the hyperreality of simulacra, human experience devolves into "a simulation of reality."
-Passage information would seem to suggest that postmodernist thought:

Accepted Answer

A)  inspires the creators of images to mislead society through media.
B)  overlooks the complicating effects of mediation.
C)  promotes forms of simulation as advantageous to society.
D)  treats the boundaries between the real and the simulated as fluid.

Question 18

Passage
A crucial part of Pinker's argument against the theory of the blank slate is to address people's motivations for wanting that theory to be true.  As he sees it: "To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed….  Any claim that the mind has an innate organization strikes people not as a hypothesis that might be incorrect but as a thought that it is immoral to think."  People thus want to believe there is no such thing as human nature, in order to avoid the negative consequences they think would follow from its existence.  Pinker argues that this position not only must ignore the compelling scientific evidence that the mind does have an innate organization, but also depends upon a fundamental mistake about the implications of that idea.For example, suppose that the relative incidence of some desirable trait was higher in certain populations than in others.  If genetics plays no part in this phenomenon, then such a difference can be attributed solely to social conditions.  Not only would that analysis uphold our commitment to the fundamental equality of persons, but it would also mean that the difference is correctable-we have only to organize society in the proper way, and the disparities between groups would disappear.  On the other hand, if any part of the difference is attributed to genetics, then it would seem to open the door to stereotyping, mistreatment of individuals based on ethnicity, and other ills.  Thus the impulse to reject the prospect of a genetic component is strong, even if the evidence were to suggest such a correlation.However, this worry is based on two misconceptions.  Pinker notes that variance of traits by population would not justify treating members of some populations differently, because it is still wrong-logically as well as morally-to judge a particular person based on the average traits of a group.  Aside from recognizing that people should be evaluated as individuals, it is simply a fact that members of a group will display a variety of characteristics that may be closer to or farther away from a statistical average.  I would add that a supposed justification of differential treatment based on inborn traits does not reflect our normal moral intuitions.  For instance, if Person A is brighter than Person B, we do not therefore conclude that Person B deserves fewer rights or less human dignity.  In the same way, differences between groups also would not justify such a view.Similarly, Pinker argues that putative differences between the sexes are dismissed out of fear that such differences would promote an evaluative hierarchy between men and women.  However, the assumption that men and women cannot be equal unless they are the same ought to strike us as deeply troubling.  That claim would seem to imply that any difference must entail a difference of value, a position which is neither plausible nor morally legitimate…Such considerations also relate to the concerns about human perfectibility alluded to earlier.  Improving people through social institutions does not require that humans be blank slates; in fact, the opposite may be true.  If we ignore the realities of human nature, then the best-intentioned social programs may be ineffective or even harmful.  Moreover, the idea that human beings are completely malleable and can be "molded" as desired ought arguably to inspire more horror than optimism….  On the other hand, acknowledging the existence of human nature enables us to organize society in ways that work with humans as they really are.  Human traits and tendencies are not the straitjackets some imagine, and recognizing their influence allows nurture to work with nature instead of against it.
-Pinker has been quoted as saying: "The case against bigotry is not a factual claim that humans are biologically indistinguishable.  It is a moral stance."  Pinker's statement is most similar to which of the following ideas in the passage?

Accepted Answer

A)  Even if the mind is not a blank slate, humans can be benefited by the right social organization.
B)  The denial of human nature would support commitment to social justice and equality.
C)  Holding morally just social views is consistent with accepting human nature.
D)  Many people fear the moral consequences of acknowledging human nature.

Question 19

Passage
Certain schools of thought that arose in the mid- to late 20th century and have since been labeled "poststructuralist" are well known for their propensity to "problematize," "destabilize," or "radicalize" the concepts of previous thinkers.  For example, the controversial French poststructuralist and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan sought to reenvision the concept, first introduced by Freud in the early 1900s, of the ego as the autonomous agent of the psyche.  Hence in his salient 1949 essay, "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the 'I' Function as Revealed in the Psychoanalytic Experience," Lacan variously describes the formation and consequent function of the ego as a schismatic event of misrecognition, an epiphenomenon of narcissism, and a process of dialectical tension.  The latter sets up an interchange between identification and alienation, generating confusion between being a subject as opposed to an object, between self and other, between what is "me" and "not me."The drama of the ego's emergence in what Lacan has designated "the Mirror Stage" explains its contrary nature.  Somewhere between 6 and 18 months of age, an infant will likely encounter his (or her)  own reflection in a mirror.  At this phase of development, the child lacks any sense of a unified self but, encouraged by an adult, is able to recognize his reflection in the glass and, at the same time, comes to understand that the specular image looking back at him is, in fact, not himself.  In other words, the image provides the infant with the first glimpse of himself as an object and specifically as "other."  According to Lacan, the initial fascination and pleasure the child experiences upon self-recognition dissolves into confusion at being unable to distinguish between what is and what is not himself.  Therefore, such recognition amounts to a kind of misrecognition, the French term for which, méconnaissance, implies an essential misunderstanding or lack of knowledge.Furthermore, while the reflection in the mirror appears coherent, coordinated, and whole, the child himself continues to perceive his body as uncoordinated and fragmentary, resulting in a profound sense of incongruity and disharmony.  By exuding mastery and harmony, the mirror image serves as a gestalt; it holds up an "Ideal-I" or future self that promises completeness and perfection-a condition, Lacan believes, that is ultimately unattainable, though we will likely spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of it.  Overall, the infant's reaction to the image or Ideal-I is narcissistic: he feels both attraction to it as a model and aggression toward it as a rival.Alienation, lack, absence, and conflict are thus constitutive of the Lacanian ego.  The child's image and, hence, the emerging ego mark an ontological gap that serves as a repository for the projections and desires, whether conscious or unconscious, of parents and others.  Consequently, this image is, as Adrian Johnston points out, "always already overwritten" with words that are not the child's own.  For Johnston, the ego could more properly be described as "a coagulation of inter- and trans-subjective alien influences."  Rather than a "fluid and autonomous subject," it becomes a rigid and "heteronomous" entity.  Derived from the desires of others, this ego is, in Lacanian terms, "extimate," or internally exterior.  It is an irreducible contradiction, both alien and alienating.This ego paradigm diverges from the more familiar and cohesive Freudian notion of the ego as the sovereign organizer of the personality, the rational mediator between internal drives and social pressures that in the interests of self-preservation will also resort to deceptions and defense mechanisms.  From a Lacanian perspective, the ego is intrinsically and irreparably divided; it functions mainly to support the fictional construct we identify-or rather, misrecognize-as the "self."
-The passage's perspective on humanistic inquiry can best be described as:

Accepted Answer

A)  evaluative.
B)  comparative.
C)  descriptive.
D)  combative.

Question 20

Passage
Because frequent consumption of unhealthy foods is strongly linked with cardiometabolic diseases, one way for governments to combat those afflictions may be to modify the eating habits of the general public.  Applying economic incentives or disincentives to various types of foods could potentially alter people's diets, leading to more positive health outcomes.Utilizing national data from 2012 regarding food consumption, health, and economic status, Peñalvo et al. concluded that such price adjustments would help to prevent deaths related to cardiometabolic diseases.  According to their analysis, increasing the prices of unhealthy foods such as processed meats and sugary sodas by 10%, while reducing the prices of healthy foods such as fruit and vegetables by 10%, would prevent an estimated 3.4% of yearly deaths in the U.S.  Changing prices by 30% would have an even stronger effect, preventing an estimated 9.2% of yearly deaths.  This data comports with that found in other countries: "These results are in line with previous modeling studies in South Africa and India, where a 20% SSB [sugar-sweetened beverage] tax was estimated to reduce diabetes prevalence by 4% over 20 years."  The effects of price adjustments would be most pronounced on persons of lower socioeconomic status, as the researchers "found an overall 18.2% higher price-responsiveness for low versus high SES groups."This differential effect based on socioeconomic status contributes to concerns about such interventions, however.  In Harvard Public Health Review, Kates and Hayward ask: "Well-intentioned though they may be, at what point do these taxes overstep government influence on an individual's right to autonomy in decision-making?  On whom does the increased financial burden of this taxation fall?"  They note that taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages, for instance, "are likely to have a greater impact on low-income individuals…because individuals in those settings are more likely to be beholden to cost when making decisions about food."However, "well-intentioned though they may be," the worries that Kates and Hayward express are to some extent misguided.  In particular, the idea that taxing unhealthy foods would burden those least able to afford it misses the point.  Although the increased taxes would affect anyone who continued to purchase the items despite the higher prices, the goal of raising prices on unhealthy foods is precisely to dissuade people from buying them.  As Kates and Hayward themselves remark, "those in low-income environments may also be the largest consumers of obesogenic foods and therefore most likely to benefit from such a lifestyle change indirectly posed by SSB taxes."  As the goal of the taxes is to promote those lifestyle changes, the financial burden objection is a non-starter.Given this recognition, the question regarding autonomy constitutes a more substantial issue.  Nevertheless, that concern also rests on a dubious assumption, as people's autonomy is not necessarily respected in the current situation either.  The fact that those of lower socioeconomic status are more likely to have poorer diets suggests that such persons' food choices are the result of financial constraint, not fully autonomous, rational deliberation.  Hence, by making healthy foods more affordable relative to unhealthy ones, government intervention might actually facilitate autonomous choices rather than hindering them.On the other hand, suppose that the disproportionate consumption of unhealthy foods-and associated higher incidence of disease-among certain groups is not the result of financial hardship but rather the result of those persons' perceived self-interest.  If so, that would suggest that members of these groups are being encouraged to persist in harmful dietary habits for the sake of corporate profits.  In that case, violating autonomy for the sake of health may be permissible anyway, as that practice would be morally preferable to the present system of corporate exploitation.
-Which of the following statements, if true, would most support the author's argument for price adjustments?

Accepted Answer

A)  A study conducted in Mexico reported 65.4% price responsiveness among low-income groups.
B)  Many corporations are willing to decrease prices to avoid losing customers.
C)  Kates and Hayward are funded by a sugar-sweetened beverage corporation.
D)  Peñalvo et al. inferred people's socioeconomic status from their educational attainment.

Exam 4: Critical Analysis & Reasoning Skills

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Exam 4: Critical Analysis & Reasoning Skills

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