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Hi Experts,
VeritasKarishma GMATNinja
Can you please explain why 73, B is incorrect?

73. The passage suggests that the historians referred to in line 1 make which of the following assumptions about Renaissance Europe?

(B) That in Renaissance Europe, women were typically allowed to express their individuality
Reason - According to first paragraph, Historians are trying to measure the degree to which individuality can be permitted. So they had to assume that women were at least allowed to express their individuality.
Lets say if they are not even allowed to express their individuality, there is no point to measure the degree to which they were allowed
What's wrong with my reasoning?

(C) That European women of the Renaissance had the possibility of acting independently of the social context in which they lived
How to arrive at C?
Historians never mentioned possibility of acting independently of the social context.
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Sneha2021
Hi Experts,
VeritasKarishma GMATNinja
Can you please explain why 73, B is incorrect?

73. The passage suggests that the historians referred to in line 1 make which of the following assumptions about Renaissance Europe?

(B) That in Renaissance Europe, women were typically allowed to express their individuality
Reason - According to first paragraph, Historians are trying to measure the degree to which individuality can be permitted. So they had to assume that women were at least allowed to express their individuality.
Lets say if they are not even allowed to express their individuality, there is no point to measure the degree to which they were allowed
What's wrong with my reasoning?

(C) That European women of the Renaissance had the possibility of acting independently of the social context in which they lived
How to arrive at C?
Historians never mentioned possibility of acting independently of the social context.

You need to understand the passage to answer correctly.

Historians believe a person is an "individual" standing away from society. They measure independence to find degree to which the expression of women’s individuality was either permitted or suppressed.

An anthropologis says that a person needn't be an “individual”. In many societies a person’s identity is not intrinsically unique and self-contained but instead is defined within a complex web of social relationships.

A historian studied a 15th century woman Alessandra Strozzi. This historian assumes that Alessandra had goals and interests different from those of her sons. But much of her research reveals that Alessandra acted primarily as a champion of her sons’ interests, taking their goals as her own.
Thus Alessandra conforms more closely to the anthropologist’s notion that personal motivation is embedded in a social context. In Renaissance Europe the boundaries of the conceptual self were not always firm and closed and did not necessarily coincide with the boundaries of the bodily self.

73. The passage suggests that the historians referred to in line 1 make which of the following assumptions about Renaissance Europe?

(A) That anthropologists overestimate the importance of the individual in Renaissance European society
They make no assumptions about anthropologists.

(B) That in Renaissance Europe, women were typically allowed to express their individuality
We are only given that the historians believed in the concept of individualism and they tried to measure independence to find whether women were allowed to express individuality. We do not know whether they believe or oppose that Renaissance women were allowed to express their individuality. We have not been given the degree to which they thought the women had independence. It could be 0 degrees or 100 degrees.

(C) That European women of the Renaissance had the possibility of acting independently of the social context in which they lived

Correct. Since we know that they believed in individualism, they thought that every person is independent of the society. Hence they believed that it is possible to act independently of the social context. That every person is an individual.

(D) That studying an individual such as Alessandra is the best way to draw general conclusions about the lives of women in Renaissance Europe

The historians of line 1 did not make any such comments as per the passage.

(E) That people in Renaissance Europe had greater personal autonomy than people do currently

No such reference.

Answer (C)
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Hi experts, I realize that a few of these questions are already discussed, but I just wanted to clarify a few things that I was still confused about. Thank you in advance for your time and help.

For question 71. (According to the passage, much of the research on Alessandra Strozzi done by the historian mentioned in the second paragraph supports which of the following conclusions?) I ended up choosing E but wanted to clarify the reason(s) as to why Choice B is incorrect.
-->I was stuck between Choice E and B when answering this question. The passage mentions that "the historian assumes that Alessandra had goals and interests different from those of her son" and "indeed, one could argue that Alessandra did not distinguish her personhood from that of her sons". Choice B is incorrect because the passage does not ever imply that Alessandra "unwillingly" sacrificed her own interests that the historian attributed to her. Also, Choice B is incorrect because it just mentions "interests" whereas Choice E mentions "goals" and "interests" (this second reason I cited was not mentioned in the Official Explanation in the Verbal Book, but it was something that I noticed and wanted to check if that was another reason to rule off this answer choice). Is my understanding correct? Thank you for your help.

For question 73. (The passage suggests that the historians referred to in line 1 make which of the following assumptions about Renaissance Europe?)
--> I would be so appreciative for further clarification as to why Choice B is incorrect because the reasoning used to explain why it is incorrect in the Official Answer from the Verbal Book can technically be used to say that Choice C is also incorrect. The Official Answer says, "even if the historians held a view regarding the scope of what women in Renaissance Europe were typically allowed to do, the passage does not attribute such a view to them." For Choice C, where in the passage does the author confirm that it is at least sometimes possible for women to act "autonomously, unaffected by social context"? All that the passage says is "influenced by Western individualism, these historians define a peculiar form of personhood: an innately bounded unit, autonomous and standing apart from both nature and society." The passage does not say that this "peculiar form of personhood" exists... seems to just be a theory.

For question 74 (In order to bolster her thesis, the historian adopted the anthropological perspective on personhood.) To clarify, Choice B is incorrect because the historian really falls into the first group of historians who try to measure "independence", "options' etc. However, the historians research actually supported what the anthropologists contend. Is my understanding correct?
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woohoo921
For question 71. [...] The passage mentions that "the historian assumes that Alessandra had goals and interests different from those of her son"

That pink word, there. That's an important word, and, given the volume of your questions here as well as your (you = woohoo921) generally solid level of basic understanding, I trust that you already have a fundamental understanding of what assumptions are—especially given their position of immense importance, at the center of a whole class of CR problems.

Perhaps, however, the CR Assumption question type has distracted you from the much wider overall scope of assumptions.

CR assumptions problems ask, "Which of these MUST be an assumption?" That's a VERY strong condition. The result is that the assumptions that correctly answer CR assumption problems are all ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY assumptions, which most real-life assumptions are pointedly not.

• Assumptions are, by definition, NOT STATED.

• CR Assumption problems ask for assumptions that are ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY, by rigorous formally logical standards.

To be absolutely necessary, an assumption must not only hew to the exact precise subset of specific content that the discussion needs, but also MUST be stated in the weakest (most modest; least broad) possible terms (Anything stronger than the minimum, even by only a tiny margin, is no longer ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY because it can be diluted into the even weaker absolute minimum version while remaining fit for purpose.)

The thing is, though, that THE WORD "ASSUMPTION" IN GENERAL does not carry either of the two very exacting mandates that NECESSARY assumptions must fulfill.
In general, assumptions are almost totally open-ended (barring explicit contradictions of given info), because nothing is stopping anybody from importing 17 different weird ideas into innocuous conversations.

Thus,
• NECESSARY assumptions—the type that constitute the goal in CR assumption problems—are only a tiny tiny fraction of all assumptions.
Generally, "assumption" means "a thing that someone just made up, inserted herself/himself into the dialogue/discussion, and ran with it"
.
Assumptions limned by random people may or may not be true. But, an author who writes about some other person's assumptions does not own them, and is not stating them, AT ALL—nor can you represent assumptions in general as true (unless they are NECESSARY assumptions).
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With these ideas reinforced in your mind—and, if you were mistakenly thinking that ALL 'assumptions' must be like CR assumption answers in order to get that label, with that false equivalence now eradicated—you should be able to see that none of the speculative steps in your paragraph about #73 are worth touching.

• Historian X assumed that Alessandra had goals and interests different from those of her son.

• At no point is there any insinuation that the author endorses this idea.

• In fact, it's almost certainIt's much more likely that the author does NOT endorse this idea. This is like other normal uses of such words. ≥99% of attributions specifically to others—"Person X said..." "You think that..." "According to person Y"—by ≥99% of real life people identify ideas with which the speaker DOES NOT agree, and that the speaker will probably try to rebut/counterargue as soon as they've fobbed those ideas off as Someone Else's Words.

• There's never any indication that the historian was right, either.


And even if you lost out on all of these points (which would happen if you mistakenly imported the idea of a NECESSARY assumption), you can still reject B because it explicitly contradicts E. If E is true, then her sons' priorities are hers as well, and so nobody had to sacrifice anything.
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DarkAveneger
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VeritasKarishma GMATNinja mikemcgarry

Can you explain question 74?


And ques 75 can't we say that historian conform to the view of anthropologist(yet much of the historian's own research reveals that Alessandra acted primarily as a champion of her sons' interests, taking their goals as her own. Thus Alessandra conforms more closely to the anthropologist's notion that personal motivation is embedded in a social context)


The passage gives the beliefs of multiple people. For question 74 and 75, we have 4 people of interest -

1. Anthropologist - who believes that person’s identity is not intrinsically unique and self-contained but instead is defined within a complex web of s social relationships

2. Historian - who believes European women of the Renaissance had individual intention and authorship of actions (their goals were different from their family's)

3. Alessandra Strozzi - a 15th century widow who was studied by the historian. We have no idea what her belief were.

4. Author


74. It can be inferred that the author of the passage believes which of the following about the study of Alessandra Strozzi done by the historian mentioned in the second paragraph?

(A) Alessandra was atypical of her time and was therefore an inappropriate choice for the subject of the historian's research.
(B) In order to bolster her thesis, the historian adopted the anthropological perspective on personhood.
(C) The historian argues that the boundaries of the conceptual self were not always firm and closed in Renaissance Europe.
(D) In her study, the historian reverts to a traditional approach that is out of step with the work of other historians of Renaissance Europe.
(E) The interpretation of Alessandra's actions that the historian puts forward is not supported by much of the historian's research.

Here we are questioning the author's beliefs. Look at what he writes:
This historian assumes that Alessandra had goals and interests different from those of her sons, yet much of the historian’s own research reveals that Alessandra acted primarily as a champion of her sons’ interests, taking their goals as her own. Thus Alessandra conforms more closely to the anthropologist’s notion that personal motivation is embedded in a social context

The author is saying that much of historian's work actually supports the anthropologist's view, not the historian's own view.

Hence (E) is correct.

"This historian assumes that Alessandra had goals and interests different from those of her sons, yet much of the historian’s own research reveals that Alessandra acted primarily as a champion of her sons’ interests, taking their goals as her own."

Here it is told that at first historian assumes that alessandra had different goals but the historian after her own research came to know that alessandra acted on her son's interest.
So my doubt is
Is option C possible as historian also came to know that alessandra had acted as her conceptual self was not firm and closed ?

Posted from my mobile device

Hi everyone.
I'm having the same question as DarkAveneger
Can anyone please help to explain?
Thank you!
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Sajjad1994
can you pls explain question 72 and 74?
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Sajjad1994
can you pls explain question 72 and 74?

For Question #74 Follow the link below.

https://gmatclub.com/forum/historians-w ... l#p2534597
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Sajjad1994
can you pls explain question 72 and 74?

Explanation

72. In the first paragraph, the author of the passage mentions a contention that would be made by an anthropologist most likely in order to

Difficulty Level: 600

Explanation

In the first paragraph, the author introduces the idea that historians studying European women of the Renaissance measure indicators of individuality, independence, and options. These historians define personhood as an "innately bounded unit, autonomous and standing apart from both nature and society." This perspective is influenced by Western individualism.

However, the author contrasts this view with the contention that an anthropologist would make. The anthropologist's perspective is that a person can be conceived in ways other than as an "individual," and in many societies, a person's identity is defined within a complex web of social relationships. This perspective challenges the Western individualistic notion of personhood and offers an alternative view that considers the social context in shaping personal motivation and identity.

The passage does not aim to undermine the view that the individuality of European women of the Renaissance was largely suppressed (option C) or argue that anthropologists have applied the Western concept of individualism in their research (option D). It also does not lay the groundwork for the conclusion that Alessandra's case is unique among European women of the Renaissance (option E) as it does not focus on Alessandra alone, but rather presents broader perspectives on the concept of personhood.

The main purpose of mentioning the anthropologist's contention is to offer an alternative perspective on the concept of personhood, particularly as it can be applied to the study of women in Renaissance Europe (option B). The passage later uses Alessandra Strozzi's case to illustrate how the anthropologist's notion of personhood may be more applicable in certain historical contexts.

Answer: B
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(B) In order to bolster her thesis, the historian adopted the anthropological perspective on personhood.
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