A friendly hello to all Olympians again. One of my clients told me that his recent GMAT™ Online test had a lot of dialogue-based CR questions, so maybe this is better practice than you think. Whenever you see two names like this, you can anticipate that the two snippets of dialogue will in some way comment on each other, most of the time presenting some divergence of opinion.
Bunuel wrote:
David: Humans did not evolve from an aquatic ancestor. Chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, share over 98 percent of our DNA, and they don’t swim or spend time in the water unless they have to. They even use leaves to soak up water to drink, rather than cup their hands.
Lynn: True, but we also have a layer of fat under our skin, which would make us unique in the animal kingdom as the only non-aquatic species that has evolved such fat, not to mention that fatty tissue is 90 percent as dense as water, helping us float and thereby conferring a survival advantage that would be useless outside of water.
Lynn responds to David’s argument by
David states his position (a.k.a. argument, claim, or conclusion) right upfront in the first line and then goes on to support this claim with a few premises, but they all boil down to a comparison between
chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, and, well, ourselves, human beings. Namely, chimpanzees show a dislike for touching
water, so humans must not have evolved
from an aquatic ancestor.
Lynn begins with
true. Now, what that word extends to is up for debate: the entire argument, the premises, or just one premise. Regardless, she then draws attention to
humans and an apparent
survival advantage in buoyancy that is conferred by our subcutaneous fat.
How can we summarize her response in relation to what David says?
Quote:
(A) agreeing with him but adding counterarguments from opponents of that view.
Who are these
opponents? Lynn neither mentions others by name nor suggests their presence through a word such as
hypothesis or
theory. It does seem clear that these new facts run counter to the ones David used to establish his claim, but evidence on its own does not form a counterargument. Now, if you are conservative like me, you might hang on to this option while you searched for one that was less objectionable, but this is a middle-of-the-road answer, probably not what we want in the end.
Quote:
(B) conceding that his evidence is valid but drawing attention to other evidence that refutes his argument.
Unless we know for sure that humans
did, in fact, evolve from an aquatic ancestor, we cannot say that the information Lynn brings up
refutes his argument. Again, there are more facts to consider, but the jury is still out on the verdict. Watch out for overreaching language.
Quote:
(C) initially agreeing with him but then changing her mind by drawing upon comparisons.
If you are reading too close to the text, you might misinterpret the opening two words that Lynn utters:
true, but... The overall context of her lines provides no indication that she agreed with the original claim but then pulled an about-face. You can almost envision the word
although or
while ahead of her portion of dialogue, and that frame sounds more like a concession, perhaps something to say to cushion the information that is about to follow.
Quote:
(D) ignoring it and attacking the implications of his facts to support her counterargument.
Not only does Lynn not
ignore the original argument—she clearly addresses human evolution, relative to an aquatic ancestor—but she does not launch into an
attack against that argument either. We would expect to see more judgmental language, such as
poorly [reasoned] or
ill [founded], to qualify labeling her lines an attack. I will discuss this notion of
her counterargument below. In all, this should be an easy elimination, given what we have seen up to this point.
Quote:
(E) acknowledging the facts he uses to support his argument but offering additional information to consider without herself making a conclusion.
All of this is difficult to argue against. Lynn does acknowledge what David said. We are not entirely sure what
true may apply to, as I wrote above, but it seems reasonable to infer that it covers the information David used to support his argument, since Lynn then provides information on the same general topic. Does Lynn make a
conclusion? No. I cannot point to any part of her speech and say,
There is your conclusion. If we go from comma to comma, all one extended line, we get the following:
true—an acknowledgement of some sort;
but we also have a layer of fat under our skin—factual information about the bodily composition of human beings;
which would make us unique in the animal kingdom as the only non-aquatic species that has evolved such fat—a concession that if David is
correct, it would defy expectation, based on our aforementioned bodily composition;
not to mention that fatty tissue is 90 percent as dense as water—another fact, this one about fat;
helping us float and thereby conferring a survival advantage that would be useless outside of water—a modifier, commenting on the previous fact.
In short, no argument or conclusion is ever on display. Lynn brings up points, nothing more.
Between (A) and (E), there is no contest. The beginning of (A) looks worse than its counterpart:
agreeing with him. To what extent does Lynn agree with David? It is much safer to say that she acknowledges something in his argument. And whereas we had to come to terms with
opponents of that view before, now we have a clearcut lack of a counterargument in (E), as detailed above. (E) is the better option, so that is why we should choose it.
Note that these "Method of Reasoning" questions share certain labeling characteristics with boldface questions. If you are interested in learning how to spot arguments and premises, these types of questions can help.
As always, good luck with your studies. I hope you enjoyed this one.
- Andrew
_________________
Please use
official questions from the Official Guide or Verbal Review to practice for the Verbal section.
24 Aug 2021, 08:00
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