#17 - Strengthen

[15veries]

Hi,

I was not sure between D and E...
Actually at first I thought they are saying the same thing.
But maybe D is discussing the "attribute mental states to others" and E is about "nonhuman primates do not produce vocalizations in response to perception of another's need for information"?
So one is like...they do something without knowing what others will be affected by the behavior (but then why do they do the behavior? JUst response to stimuli?) and the other is just responding to stimuli? (but then I thought this is the same as the first one...)
What's the difference?

[Adam Tyson]

Hey 15v, thanks for asking. Maritain's says that bees dance solely by conditional reflex, without any conscious understanding of what they are "saying". That's what we want to support with evidence from passage A.

Answer E tells us only that macaques communicate, but it adds nothing to support Maritain's claim that such communication is merely reflex and lacks intention. That statement, by itself, could just as easily support that there IS intention, right?

Answer D, though, at least makes a negative connection for us. Negative evidence (or a lack of evidence) really proves nothing, but this answer is still the best of the bunch because it at least addresses the concept of "no intention" that Maritain claims.

Since D at least addresses that issue, and E ignores it, D is the better answer of the two.

Keep at it! You're asking good questions!

[PianolessPianist]

Hey 15v, thanks for asking. Maritain's says that bees dance solely by conditional reflex, without any conscious understanding of what they are "saying". That's what we want to support with evidence from passage A.

Answer E tells us only that macaques communicate, but it adds nothing to support Maritain's claim that such communication is merely reflex and lacks intention. That statement, by itself, could just as easily support that there IS intention, right?

Answer D, though, at least makes a negative connection for us. Negative evidence (or a lack of evidence) really proves nothing, but this answer is still the best of the bunch because it at least addresses the concept of "no intention" that Maritain claims.

Since D at least addresses that issue, and E ignores it, D is the better answer of the two.

Keep at it! You're asking good questions!

Hey, thanks for the explanation. However, I disagree that "Answer E tells us only that macaques communicate, but it adds nothing to support Maritain's claim that such communication is merely reflex and lacks intention."

Answer E, as I understand it, refers to the evidence provided in passage A, which states that macaques were not more likely to make cooing/alarm sounds. This is used in Passage A to demonstrate that macaques do not have intention to communicate, which would therefore also support Maritain's position.

The frogs, however, are much weaker evidence since there is no actual demonstration - it's simply saying "we don't know that they do have intention," whereas the macaques argument tells us "since macaques behave no differently regardless of who is aware/around, we can deduce that they don't have any particular intention when calling"

Can anyone provide some further clarification? thanks!

[James Finch]

Hi Pianist,

(D) here does give some (admittedly weak) evidence that the frogs may not call out intentionally--we may never know definitively, as it's very difficult if not impossible to prove nonexistence of a thing, but having no evidence means we certainly can't conclude intentionality. (E) does refer to the same evidence as is stated in Passage A (a good clue that this isn't the correct answer choice, as a question like this will generally bring in outside information), but with one crucial difference: it doesn't mention the lack of evidence for intentionality that Passage A does, meaning that it refers only to the fact that the macaques do these things, not why they do them (which is the important part). So (E) is missing a crucial element that (D) has: explicit lack of evidence of intentionality.

Hope this clears things up!

[PianolessPianist]

Thanks!

[flexbubbleboi]

I'm still having trouble with this question because it seems like, in the case of the frogs, Passage A does attribute an intention. 11-15 says that the frogs call *because* it causes females to approach and males to retreat. It says that the frog doesn't have a theory of mind with regard to the other frogs, but that he's doing so to achieve a given effect.

When it comes to the macaques, however, Passage A just says they make these sounds, and doesn't give any causal reason. So D seems like a much better match to Maritain's position than E does to me. Any advice?

[Robert Carroll]

flex,

But that intention is precisely unconscious, as you point out. So Maritain believes animals have no conscious intention behind communication. Lines 11-17 show that frogs lack a conscious mental attitude when engaging in communication. While perhaps we could call that "intention", it's exactly unconscious, so Maritain is right - the conjunction of "conscious" and "intention" is not found in the case of the frogs.

Robert Carroll

[flexbubbleboi]

Thank you -- I see I was getting up on what "conscious" exactly means, and missing the fact that the assertion in E doesn't itself provide support for Maritain's view, while the assertion in D could! Not seeing the forest for the trees...

[arvinm123]

Hoping someone can help me out before my exam this Saturday

I was stuck between B and D, and ultimately went with B. Here's why:

the question wants us to provide support for (or strengthen) Maritan's view, which essentially states that such communication is a conditioned reflex, and lacks conscious intent. Initially I wanted to go with D, but then I thought that D was more of a parallel match to the statement we were trying to strengthen about the honey bees, whereas answer B gives a possible evolutionary origin of this behaviour that would benefit the signaller. So I thought this would more so strengthen the claim we were trying to support (Maritan's) , which revolved around the honey bees communicating reflexively , rather than consciously. Doesn't the evolutionary explanation B provides support that this behaviour could merely be reflexive to benefit the signaller? Or is this too big of a leap?

Thanks!

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Arvinm,

The problem with answer choice (B) is that it is consistent both with using the calls with a conscious intention that the signals be understood in a certain way by the listener, as well as using the calls without any conscious intention to change the behavior of the listener. In answer choice (D), the answer choice is specific that there is no evidence that the frog calls with the intention of being understood in a certain way.

Good luck this weekend!