- PowerScore Staff
- Posts: 705
- Joined: Oct 19, 2022
- Thu Dec 28, 2023 3:01 pm
#104562
Hi Marion,
The first thing that I'd like to draw your attention to is that the question is asking with which of the following answers would the author of the passage be most likely to agree, not which of the following answers is objectively true. This distinction is important because, for all we know, the author may be completely wrong about their hypotheses on these ancient symbols. Perhaps, as you point out, in reality these symbols were not chosen arbitrarily but had some logic that we don't understand.
But, and this is the key point, that's not what the author believes. In the passage, the author distinguishes between two types of symbols, abstract (meaning the symbols have no obvious connection to what they represent) and pictographs (where the symbols look like a picture of what they represent).
A pictograph of a sheep would literally be a picture of a sheep. In that case, if you changed the picture (to a bird, for example), it would no longer make sense as symbol for a sheep.
On the other hand, the circled cross as a symbol for sheep is abstract, meaning that the symbol could be changed to something else (perhaps a star, or a triangle) without losing meaning in the same way a pictograph would lose meaning.
Now if it turns out that the circled cross actually represented the sheep's hoof, or nose, etc. and the author just didn't realize this, then the author would be wrong, but the author never mentions this possibility, so the author believes that the circled cross was simply the design that was chosen but had no specific reason for being chosen, which is what makes it abstract.
Finally, your comment "It seems like in the scenario of this answer being correct, anything other than a system of symbols based on pure memorization with no connection to one another is ruled out, leaving us with a system of pure randomness, which seems the most unlikely of all" seems to suggest a misunderstanding. It's not that the symbols cannot be used in connection with other symbols, instead it is that the given symbol didn't have to look the way that it does. Abstract symbols being used to represent ideas or parts of language are quite common, including English. The symbol that we use to represent a comma didn't have to look like "," the question mark didn't have to look like "?" the letters of the alphabet didn't have to look the way that they do, etc.. In a sense, they were arbitrarily chosen and any one of them could have been replaced with another symbol, as long as that other symbol wasn't already being used for another purpose, as that would create confusion.
The first thing that I'd like to draw your attention to is that the question is asking with which of the following answers would the author of the passage be most likely to agree, not which of the following answers is objectively true. This distinction is important because, for all we know, the author may be completely wrong about their hypotheses on these ancient symbols. Perhaps, as you point out, in reality these symbols were not chosen arbitrarily but had some logic that we don't understand.
But, and this is the key point, that's not what the author believes. In the passage, the author distinguishes between two types of symbols, abstract (meaning the symbols have no obvious connection to what they represent) and pictographs (where the symbols look like a picture of what they represent).
A pictograph of a sheep would literally be a picture of a sheep. In that case, if you changed the picture (to a bird, for example), it would no longer make sense as symbol for a sheep.
On the other hand, the circled cross as a symbol for sheep is abstract, meaning that the symbol could be changed to something else (perhaps a star, or a triangle) without losing meaning in the same way a pictograph would lose meaning.
Now if it turns out that the circled cross actually represented the sheep's hoof, or nose, etc. and the author just didn't realize this, then the author would be wrong, but the author never mentions this possibility, so the author believes that the circled cross was simply the design that was chosen but had no specific reason for being chosen, which is what makes it abstract.
Finally, your comment "It seems like in the scenario of this answer being correct, anything other than a system of symbols based on pure memorization with no connection to one another is ruled out, leaving us with a system of pure randomness, which seems the most unlikely of all" seems to suggest a misunderstanding. It's not that the symbols cannot be used in connection with other symbols, instead it is that the given symbol didn't have to look the way that it does. Abstract symbols being used to represent ideas or parts of language are quite common, including English. The symbol that we use to represent a comma didn't have to look like "," the question mark didn't have to look like "?" the letters of the alphabet didn't have to look the way that they do, etc.. In a sense, they were arbitrarily chosen and any one of them could have been replaced with another symbol, as long as that other symbol wasn't already being used for another purpose, as that would create confusion.
