#6 - Psychologist: Thinking can occur without language.

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[lsatstudying11]

Hello!

I picked A but was tempted by C because I couldn't tell if the conclusion was the first or the last line. I wanted to ask how we know that it is not the case that 'thinking without language' supports the conclusion that 'infants have a typical human face in their minds'? I guess the other way seems more logical, but for some reason, this structure makes a little bit of sense to me as well. Thanks in advance!

[KelseyWoods]

Hi lsatstudying11!

Looking at the argument as a whole, the last sentence is completely supported by the 2nd and 3rd sentences. How do we know that the infants must have the thought of a typical human face in their minds? Because they can detect anomalies in pictures of human faces. Notice that the last sentence is not actually dependent on any of the information about language. We don't need to know whether or not the infants have language to prove the statement that they must have the thought of a typical human face in their minds. The last statement just states that they have thoughts. But the fact that they have the thoughts + the fact that they do not have language, adds up to the conclusion that thinking can occur without language. Thus, the first sentence is the general conclusion and the rest of the argument is the specific example that supports that general conclusion.

Hope this helps!

Best,
Kelsey