ravigupta2912 wrote:
Yellkrishna wrote:
The author gives a critique on the western thought. Then he talks about an individual’s thought process and extrapolates it to a civilisational level.
A. This makes sense. It talks about different levels of thought process and then tries to correlate them.
B. There are no opposed sets of circumstances being discussed here. The ‘other’ being discussed is part of an elaborate topic.
C. The conclusion does not seem to have a supporting evidence in the same sphere of thought.
But the different circumstances in the individual scale has been used to compare with the state level
of thought. ‘Even as’ has been used to use the following sentence as a supporting argument.
While the supporting argument can be discussed as insufficient, it is not irrelevant.
D. Conflicting evidence?
E. There is no critical term as such.
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What is the point of similarity that the argument identifies though? I marked D since I couldn't see or infer any similarity?
Here is how I reasoned through it:
The author makes the statement "Even as an individual fails to develop fully without constant interaction with an equal, a tradition of thought loses vitality and lacks the capacity for rigorous self-criticism without the probing presence of an authentic “other"."
The similarity here is between how "an individual does develop fully without interaction of an "equal". The author makes the claim that western thinking does not interact with other traditions, and likens it to an individual who does not interact with an equal - both are underdeveloped because of the lack of interaction.
Through PoE:
E) Can be easily eliminated. There is no critical term defined here.
D) No conflicting assumptions have been made, nor is any conclusion derived from an assumption.
C) No other conclusion apart from the author's is present in the passage.
B) No reconciliation is done in the passage, nor are there opposed set of circumstances.
A) Last man standing, and matches perfectly with the reasoning - the author compares "individual w/o interaction" to how "western culture and thinking does not interact".
From what I can recall, the GMAT does not test method of reasoning - so I would not stress too hard over this question if you are having a hard time getting it.