Every moral theory developed in the Western tradition purports to tell us what a good life is. However, most people would judge someone who perfectly embodied the ideals of any one of these theories not to be living a good life -- the kind of life they would want for themselves and their children.
The statements above, if true, most strongly support which one of the following?
A. Most people desire a life for themselves and their children that is better than a merely good life.An antidote for chicken pox has been developed, but researchers warn that its widespread use could be dangerous, despite the fact that this drug has no serious side effects and is currently very effective at limiting the duration and severity of chicken pox.
Which one of the following, if true, helps most to reconcile the apparent discrepancy indicated above?
A. The drug is extremely expensive and would be difficult to make widely available.Conflict had existed between Spain and England since the 1570s. England wanted a share of the wealth that Spain had been taking from the lands it had claimed in the Americas. Elizabeth I, Queen of England, encouraged her staunch admiral of the navy, Sir Francis Drake, to raid Spanish ships and towns. Though these raids were on a small scale, Drake achieved dramatic success, adding gold and silver to England's treasury and diminishing Spain's omnipotence. Religious differences also caused conflict between the two countries. Whereas Spain was Roman Catholic, most of England had become Protestant. King Philip II of Spain wanted to claim the throne and make England a Catholic country again. To satisfy his ambition and also to retaliate against England's theft of his gold and silver, King Philip began to build his fleet of warships, the Armada, in January 1586. Philip intended his fleet to be indestructible. In addition to building new warships, he marshaled one hundred and thirty sailing vessels of all types and recruited more than nineteen thousand robust soldiers and eight thousand sailors. Although some of his ships lacked guns and others lacked ammunition, Philip was convinced that his Armada could withstand any battle with England.
The martial Armada set sail from Lisbon, Portugal, on May 9,1588, but bad weather forced it back to port. The voyage resumed on July 22 after the weather became more stable. The Spanish fleet met the smaller, faster, and more maneuverable English ships in battle off the coast of Plymouth, England, first on July 31 and again on August 2. The two battles left Spain vulnerable, having lost several ships and with its ammunition depleted. On August 7, while the Armada lay at anchor on the French side of the Strait of Dover, England sent eight burning ships into the midst of the Spanish fleet to set it on fire. Blocked on one side, the Spanish ships could only drift away, their crews in panic and disorder. Before the Armada could regroup, the English attacked again on August 8. Although the Spaniards made a valiant effort to fight back, the fleet suffered extensive damage. During the eight hours of battle, the Armada drifted perilously close to the rocky coastline. At the moment when it seemed that the Spanish ships would be driven onto the English shore, the wind shifted, and the Armada drifted out into the North Sea. The Spaniards recognized the superiority of the English fleet and returned home, defeated.
The Armada was _________________ on one side.
A. closed offHana said she was not going to invite her brothers to her birthday party. However, among the gifts Hana received at her party was a recording in which she had expressed an interest. Since her brothers had planned to give her that recording, at least some of Hana's brothers must have been among the guests at Hana's birthday party after all.
A reasoning error in the argument is that the argument
A. disregards the possibility that a change of mind might be justified by a change in circumstancesMany political economists believe that the soundest indicator of the economic health of a nation is the nation's gross-national product (GNP) per capita ?a figure reached by dividing the total value of the goods produced yearly in a nation by its population and taken to be a measure of the welfare of the nation's residents. But there are many factors affecting residents' welfare that are not captured by per capita GNP; human indicators, while sometimes more difficult to calculate or document, provide sounder measures of a nation's progress than does the indicator championed by these economists. These human indicators include nutrition and life expectancy; birth weight and level of infant mortality; ratio of population level to availability of resources; employment opportunities; and the ability of governments to provide services such as education, clean water, medicine, public transportation, and mass communication for their residents.
The economists defend their use of per capita GNP as the sole measure of a nation's economic health by claiming that improvements in per capita GNP eventually stimulate improvements in human indicators. But, in actuality, this often fails to occur. Even in nations where economic stimulation has brought about substantial improvements in per capita GNP, economic health as measured by human indicators does not always reach a level commensurate with the per capita GNP. Nations that have achieved a relatively high per capita GNP, for example, sometimes experience levels of infant survival, literacy, nutrition, and life expectancy no greater than levels in nations where per capita GNP is relatively low. In addition, because per capita GNP is an averaged figure, it often presents a distorted picture of the wealth of a nation; for example, in a relatively sparsely populated nation where a small percentage of residents receives most of the economic benefits of production while the majority receives very little benefit, per capita GNP may nevertheless be high. The welfare of a nation's residents is a matter not merely of total economic benefit, but also of the distribution of economic benefits across the entire society. Measuring a nation's economic health only by total wealth frequently obscures a lack of distribution of wealth across the society as a whole.
In light of the potential for such imbalances in distribution of economic benefits, some nations have begun to realize that their domestic economic efforts are better directed away from attempting to raise per capita GNP and instead toward ensuring that the conditions measured by human indicators are salutary. They recognize that unless a shift in focus away from using material wealth as the sole indicator of economic success is effected, the well-being of the nation may be endangered, and that nations that do well according to human indicators may thrive even if their per capita GNP remains stable or lags behind that of other nations.
Based on the passage, the political economists discussed in the passage would be most likely to agree with which one of the following statements?
A. A change in a nation's per capita GNP predicts a similar future change in the state of human indicators in that nation.While historians once propagated the myth that Africans who were brought to the New World as slaves contributed little of value but their labor, a recent study by Amelia Wallace Vernon helps to dispel this notion by showing that Africans introduced rice and the methods of cultivating it into what is now the United States in the early eighteenth century. She uncovered, for example, an 1876 document that details that in 1718 starving French settlers instructed the captain of a slave ship bound for Africa to trade for 400 Africans including some "who know how to cultivate rice." This discovery is especially compelling because the introduction of rice into what is now the United States had previously been attributed to French Acadians, who did not arrive until the 1760s.
Vernon interviewed elderly African Americans who helped her discover the locations where until about 1920 their forebears had cultivated rice. At the heart of Vernon's research is the question of why, in an economy dedicated to maximizing cotton production, African Americans grew rice. She proposes two intriguing answers, depending on whether the time is before or after the end of slavery. During the period of slavery, plantation owners also ate rice and therefore tolerated or demanded its "after-hours" cultivation on patches of land not suited to cotton. In addition, growing the rice gave the slaves some relief from a system of regimented labor under a field supervisor, in that they were left alone to work independently.
After the abolition of slavery, however, rice cultivation is more difficult to explain: African Americans had acquired a preference for eating corn, there was no market for the small amounts of rice they produced, and under the tenant system ?in which farmers surrendered a portion of their crops to the owners of the land they farmed ?owners wanted only cotton as payment. The labor required to transform unused land to productive ground would thus seem completely out of proportion to the reward ?except that, according to Vernon, the transforming of the land itself was the point.
Vernon suggests that these African Americans did not transform the land as a means to an end, but rather as an end in itself. In other words, they did not transform the land in order to grow rice ?for the resulting rice was scarcely worth the effort required to clear the land- ?but instead transformed the land because they viewed land as an extension of self and home and so wished to nurture it and make it their own. In addition to this cultural explanation, Vernon speculates that rice cultivation might also have been a political act, a next step after the emancipation of the slaves: the symbolic claiming of plantation land that the U.S. government had promised but failed to parcel off and deed to newly freed African Americans.
The author's primary purpose in the passage is to
A. describe the efforts of a historian to uncover evidence for a puzzling phenomenonSeveral recent studies establish that most people would want to be informed if they had any serious medical condition. In each study, over 80 percent of the people surveyed indicated that they would want to be told.
Each of the following, if true, weakens the argument EXCEPT:
A. In another recent study, most of the people surveyed indicated that they would not want to be told if they had a serious medical condition.Twelve healthy volunteers with the Apo-A-IV-1 gene and twelve healthy volunteers who instead have the Apo-A-IV-2 gene each consumed a standard diet supplemented daily by a high-cholesterol food. A high level of cholesterol in the blood is associated with an increased risk of heart disease. After three weeks, the blood cholesterol levels of the subjects in the second group were unchanged, whereas the blood cholesterol levels of those with the Apo-A-IV-1 gene rose 20 percent.
Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the information above?
A. Approximately half the population carries a gene that lowers cholesterol levels.By passing more and more regulations allegedly to protect the environment, the state is driving the manufacturing industry away. And when the employers leave, the workers will follow. The number of new no growth or environmental rules passed each year is increasing by leaps and bounds. Rich environmentalists who think they are sympathetic to workers have no real sympathy for the blue-collar employees are injured by their activities. One major manufacturer has been fined for failing to establish a car-pool plan. Another is accused of polluting the air with industrial emissions, although everyone knows that two thirds of the pollutants come from cars and trucks. No wonder the large manufacturers are moving to states with fewer restrictive laws. And as the manufacturers go, unemployment and the number of workers leaving the state will rise more rapidly than ever before.
The author's argument that strict environmental laws will eventually lead to loss of workers in the state will be most weakened if it can be shown that
A. so far, the number of manufacturers who have left the state is smallMany educators in Canada and the United States advocate multicultural education as a means of achieving multicultural understanding. There are, however, a variety of proposals as to what multicultural education should consist of. The most modest of these proposals holds that schools and colleges should promote multicultural understanding by teaching about other cultures, teaching which proceeds from within the context of the majority culture. Students should learn about other cultures, proponents claim, but examination of these cultures should operate with the methods, perspectives, and values of the majority culture. These values are typically those of liberalism: democracy, tolerance, and equality of persons.
Critics of this first proposal have argued that genuine understanding of other cultures is impossible if the study of other cultures is refracted through the distorting lens of the majority culture's perspective. Not all cultures share liberal values. Their value systems have arisen in often radically different social and historical circumstances, and thus, these critics argue, cannot be understood and adequately appreciated if one insists on approaching them solely from within the majority culture's perspective.
In response to this objection, a second version of multicultural education has developed that differs from the first in holding that multicultural education ought to adopt a neutral stance with respect to the value differences among cultures. The values of one culture should not be standards by which others are judged; each culture should be taken on its own terms. However, the methods of examination, study, and explanation of cultures in this second version of multicultural education are still identifiably Western. They are the methods of anthropology, social psychology, political science, and sociology. They are, that is, methods which derive from the Western scientific perspective and heritage.
Critics of this second form of multicultural education argue as follows: The Western scientific heritage is founded upon an epistemological system that prizes the objective over the subjective, the logical over the intuitive, and the empirically verifiable over the mystical. The methods of social-scientific examination of cultures are thus already value laden; the choice to examine and understand other cultures by these methods involves a commitment to certain values such as objectivity. Thus, the second version of multicultural education is not essentially different from the first. Scientific discourse has a privileged place in Western cultures, but the discourses of myth, tradition, religion, and mystical insight are often the dominant forms of thought and language of non-Western cultures. To insist on trying to understand nonscientific cultures by the methods of Western science is not only distorting, but is also an expression of an attempt to maintain a Eurocentric cultural chauvinism: the chauvinism of science. According to this objection, it is only by adopting the (often nonscientific) perspectives and methods of the cultures studied that real understanding can be achieved.
Which one of the following most accurately describes the organization of the passage as a whole?
A. Difficulties in achieving a goal are contrasted with the benefits of obtaining that goal.Nowadays, the certification exams become more and more important and required by more and more enterprises when applying for a job. But how to prepare for the exam effectively? How to prepare for the exam in a short time with less efforts? How to get a ideal result and how to find the most reliable resources? Here on Vcedump.com, you will find all the answers. Vcedump.com provide not only LSAC exam questions, answers and explanations but also complete assistance on your exam preparation and certification application. If you are confused on your LSAT-TEST exam preparations and LSAC certification application, do not hesitate to visit our Vcedump.com to find your solutions here.