#9 - Global Reference, Must Be True, Purpose/Function

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

The correct answer choice is (D).

Answer choice (A):

Answer choice (B):

Answer choice (C):

Answer choice (D): This is the correct answer choice.

Answer choice (E):

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

[T.B.Justin]

Hey,

I had this down to 2 - D and E. I notated D as "secondary" and E as "primary," thus selecting the incorrect answer choice E.

I get that D is a purpose of this passage, however how is that more significant than, what I found to be the author's motivation for arguing against those economist's view by suggesting the implementation of (ln 47-51) his proposal for penalizing corporate crime.

Thanks!

[Jay Donnell]

Hey T.B.!

The author's primary purpose here was given away most clearly by this statement in line 20: "But this approach seems highly impractical if not impossible to follow." This points neatly to the correct response in D, which says the primary purpose was to: "argue against some economists’ view of how to penalize corporate crime"

The author spent the bulk of the passage addressing the pitfalls of the assertion by economists that "the law...should affect corporations’ earnings rather than try to assess their morality." The last sentence contained a possible solution as to an added factor to help create a better system, but even that solution is in direct opposition to the economist's suggestion. They argue that the law should affect the earnings more than assess their morality, and the author's solution directly violates that point of view by suggesting that "the assignment of moral weight to particular crimes" may be a necessary factor to include.

Though there is mention of one particular alteration in the final sentence, it falls far short of being a sufficiently important force within the passage to justify the primary purpose being, as E says, to "urge the implementation of a specific proposal for penalizing corporate crime."

Primary purpose questions can be big pains in the butt, as so often is the case that multiple answers accurately describes true elements of what happened in the passage, but fail to accurately convey the 'big picture' of what the author was trying to accomplish in writing the passage.


Hope this helped!