Passage - General Questions

[Administrator]

Passage Discussion

VIEWSTAMP Analysis:


This explanation is still in progress. Please post any questions below!

[lathlee]

Viewstamp analysis for this RC Passage
Viewstamp:
ViewPoints:
1. Scholars (1-5)
2. Social psychologists (L7,23-37)
3. Political theorists (L7, 38-47)
4. Author (9-12, 13-22, 51-70)
5.The theory of Rising expectations (L 24-29)
6. Relative deprivation (L 29-34)
7. J curve( L 34-37)

Structure:
P1: Civil rights for black people, scholars argue from various theories Not only particularly, social psychologists and political theorists.

P2: author introduces and explains there are three theories, 1. Rising expectations, 2. relative deprivations, and 3. J-Curve

P3: protest activity is analyzed of why they occurred according to the three theories.

P4: present an anti-thesis argument of prior three theory, political theorists state social psychologists’ arguments are based on unrealistic assumptions, missing out more important characteristic features.

P5. the strength of theories, the likely possibility, how to be tested, and solution for the testing limit for all theories.

Tone: pretty much all neutral according to all viewpoints from all perspectives. (Author says, problematically, (L53) possibility for three theories to be real for social psychologist theory ) but later says there is ample evidence for all three theories. So problematic indicates not too much problem.

Argument:

Scholar: there could be theoretical perspective capable of classifying black people in US civil rights movement

Social psychologist: there are three competing theories that are based and explain the outcome differently.

Rising expectation: protect activity caused by a response to psychological tensions generated by gains experienced immediately prior to civil rights movement. Advance created the desire for further advancement.

Relative deprivation: impetus to protest as are pretty much pre-movement period prior gains

J curve theory: movement caused by the period of rising expectation and gratification followed by a sharp reversal.

Political theorists: do not believe these three arguments. Classical theory trivializes the political ends of movement participants focusing rather on presumed psychological dysfunctions and reductio into complex social situations to simple paradigms and focus on shortest term analysis way too much.

And these three social psychology theories lack predictive value due to strain is always present anyways but a social movement is not and there is no way knowing which strain will provoke upheaval.

author: -
-The source of strain is the socio-economic status of the black population before the phenomenon.
-there is ample evidence to support the social psychologist arguments. -In order to rank the superior of the three social psychologist theories to the ability to explain the social situation, press coverage. But movement activity pace is not really significantly correlated with the pace of reports.

MP:(L1-5) I am not very confident though.

what do you think?

[Adam Tyson]

I think you are overthinking this one, lathlee, and assigning viewpoints and arguments where they do not belong.

A viewpoint is not based just on someone or some group being mentioned in the passage. Rather, a viewpoint is a position taken by that individual or group, their beliefs or attitudes. Do the scholars mentioned in the first five lines come with an attitude or position? I don't see one, at least not there. This is just the author telling us about what is happening in the world of those scholars. There is no opinion shared, no belief stated, no attitude.

Arguments are present when there are premises and conclusions, just as in LR questions. For each of the arguments you have identified, go back to the passage and answer these questions for yourself:

1. Who is making the argument?
2. What are their premises, as presented in the passage?
3. What is their conclusion, as presented in the passage?

If you cannot answer all three questions, then you are likely not looking at an argument. Think of it in a predictive way - arguments presented in RC passages usually lead to questions about strengthening or weakening those arguments, and occasionally about identifying the premises of those arguments. Also about whether the person or group making an argument would agree or disagree with a given claim. Do the "arguments" you have identified here have enough substance that you could weaken or strengthen them? What sort of claims would the arguing parties agree with and disagree with? If you don't see enough substance there to predict, and to answer, those sorts of questions, then you are just making more work for yourself by treating them as arguments for the sake of a VIEWSTAMP analysis.

For the structure, try to assign just one or two words to each paragraph. Think about the content of the answers to structure questions you have seen, and how those answers are built. Those answers don't have details, as your analysis here has. Instead, they tend to say things like "A trend is described, a list of varying approaches is presented, an example of one approach is described, the other approaches are compared,..." etc. Build your structure the same way - what happened, in what order, in simple terms and without details.

Give it another try, and keep it simple and short. Then, share with us again.

[lathlee]

2nd attempt:

Viewstamp analysis for this RC Passage

ViewPoints:

2. Social psychologists (L7,23-37)
3. Political theorists (L7, 38-47)
4. Author (9-12, 13-22, 51-70)
5.The theory of Rising expectations (L 24-29)
6. Relative deprivation (L 29-34)
7. J curve( L 34-37)

Structure:

P1: Civil rights for black people, important gains progressed for black people discussed by social psychologists and political theorists.

P2: Author introduces and explains there are 3 social movement theories, 1. Rising expectations, 2. relative deprivations, and 3. J-Curve. Then explains the source of protests and change of socioeconomic status from black people.

P3: protest activity is analyzed of why they occurred according to the three theories.

P4: present an anti-thesis argument of prior three theory by political theorists, dismissive of these 3 social movement theories for following: 1) based on unrealistic assumptions 2) missing out more important and deterministic characteristic features of protests.

P5. How the strength of theories, the likely possibility, can be tested, and solution for the possible improvement for all theories.

Tone: pretty much all neutral according to all viewpoints from all perspectives. (Author says, problematically, (L53) possibility for three theories to be real for social psychologist theory ) but later says there is ample evidence for all three theories. So the word, problematic (L 53) indicates considering problems not significant problems for all three social movement theories.

political theorists are dismissive of these three theories (48-49)

Argument:

Social psychologist: Each 3 social movement theories are based and explain the outcome of social phenomenon in unique ways.

Rising expectation: protect activity caused by a response to psychological tensions generated by gains experienced immediately prior to civil rights movement. Advance created the desire for further advancement.

Relative deprivation: impetus to protest as are pretty much pre-movement period prior gains

J curve theory: movement caused by the period of rising expectation and gratification followed by a sharp reversal.

Political theorists: do not believe these three arguments. These 3 theories trivialize the political ends of movement participants focusing rather on presumed psychological dysfunctions and reductio into complex social situations to simple paradigms and focus on shortest term analysis way too much.

And these three social psychology theories lack predictive value due to strain is always present anyways but a social movement is not and there is no way knowing which strain will provoke upheaval.

author: -
-The source of strain is the socio-economic status of the black population before the phenomenon.
-there is ample evidence to support the social psychologist arguments. -In order to rank the superior of the three social psychologist theories to the ability to explain the social situation, press coverage.
- There needs to be "better test" mechanism to determine the 3 social movement theories' validity.
- But movement activity pace is not really significantly correlated with the pace of reports.

MP: L. 54-59

[Adam Tyson]

I'm going to push back again and ask about these viewpoints, lathlee. You say there is a viewpoint of Social Psychologists found in lines 23-37. Who are these social psychologists, and what is their viewpoint? What do they think, feel or believe? You also indicated that each of the three theories has or is a viewpoint. Do those theories think something or believe something? No way - they don't think or feel, because they are just theories! The question you should ask is whether someone or some group that we can identify in the passage thinks, feels, or believes something about those theories. Does someone think one theory is the most accurate? Does some group claim that one of the theories is flawed? That's what viewpoints are - not just the description of an idea or theory, but a judgment about those ideas or theories.

Do it again, and continue to scale it back. You are still going way overboard on these analyses, which will waste time and effort and lead to more confusion rather than greater understanding and accuracy in answering questions. When you say there is a viewpoint, tell me exactly who holds that view and what they think or feel or believe.

Here's what I see:

Political theorists feel that the classical theories are not good because they trivialize the political ends of movement participants.

The author thinks those guys have a point, but that the classical theories all have a place, and there might be a better test that could be applied.

That's it, just two viewpoints in the whole passage. We might get asked how the author feels about the political theorists, or what they agree about, or what they disagree about. We might get asked to identify one of those viewpoints (see question 24).

This is not to say that we don't need to pay attention to the differences in the three classical theories - to the contrary, question 23 tests your understanding of the key differences between two of them. What I am saying is that there is a difference between being given some data and being given an opinion about that data. Viewpoints are opinions, thoughts, feelings, while data is just...data. We don't get questioned about data in the same way we get questioned about viewpoints, so confusing one for another is, in addition to wasteful of time and effort, likely to lead to greater difficulty in answering the questions.

Keep it simpler, lathlee! Try again, and keep it simple. We can talk about the structure and arguments analysis after you take another swing at it. When you do, if you are going to call something an argument, you have to be able to identify the premises and conclusions of the argument and be prepared to strengthen or weaken them. A theory is not necessarily, by itself, an argument, at least not in the LSAT sense, because it may present only a claim with no premises to support it. We might get asked for something that will make the theory more or less likely to be correct, which would be a strengthen or weaken question, but that doesn't mean the theory is, as presented, an argument for our purposes.