LSAT 150 | Section 4 | Reading Comprehension: Q10

RC Question 10 Explanation

DISCUSSION: If you keep reading just past this line, you’ll see “But….their arguments do not commit them”. So, the author is saying that the psychologists do not necessarily think that our inferences about our own thinking are only external.

Further, if you read before that line, the author says in line 43 that the psychologists come “perilously” close to the quotes beliefs. So presumably the author thinks the quoted beliefs are wrong.

___________

1. Not necessarily. Studies are always external. We can’t see inside people’s heads. So however people get their inferences, we’re forced to study them externally. If our inferences about our thoughts were wholly external, scientists could still study those inferences.
2. This is a trap. The author said the psychologists seemed close to having to believe the statement. But lines 46-58 make clear that psychologists don’t believe this statement.
    
   So, the psychologists don’t believe it. And, beyond that we have no evidence about what psychologists thought about this belief (other than not believing it). Presumably they understood it correctly in order to avoid it.
3. Lines 1-2 make clear that people’s prevailing view is that we can judge our thoughts accurately because we know them internally. The idea that everything is external contradicts the prevailing view.
4. Rubbish. In line 43 the author calls this idea “perilous”. They certainly don’t think it’s a sound idea.
5. CORRECT. This matches best. If a belief that you hold is intellectually defensible, then there is nothing perilous about it, in the sense that the author uses that word. The author is implying that the psychologists are very close to a clearly wrong belief. (But the psychologists don’t actually hold that view.)