#7 - Although instinct enables organisms to make complex

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Must Be True-SN. The correct answer choice is (B)

This stimulus provides us with several facts: Instinct allows organisms to respond, but requires no reasoning and relatively few nerve cells. To go beyond just instinct, a brain has to have a certain number of neurons, and insects don’t have enough. What is the logical inference? That insects are pure instinct—incapable of “flexible” (that is, non-instinctive) behavior). This is exactly what correct answer choice (B) provides.

Answer choice (A): The author provides no comparison between the relative amounts of instinctual versus non-instinctual behavior, so this answer choice is unsupported by the stimulus.

Answer choice (C): The stimulus tells us nothing about any other specific organism, so there is no way to know whether there are others that are also purely instinctual.

Answer choice (D): Again, the author tells us nothing about those with large brains, so we can’t assess whether they all have the capacity for flexible behavior.

Answer choice (E): Like the incorrect answer choices above, there is no information in the stimulus to allow this inference, so this answer choice is incorrect.

[ellenb]

Dear Powerscore,

I have trouble seeing how for this question answer choice A is the wrong one.

Elaborate brain mechanisms, I thought of them as well developed and to include a large number of neurons. Am I doing a Mistaken Reversal?

Since we have: Flexible-->Large Number of Neurons
and the answer choice is saying if you have an Elaborate Brain (I assumed with a large number of neurons--than you have a flexible brain.

Thanks in advance!
Ellen

[David Boyle]

Dear Powerscore,

I have trouble seeing how for this question answer choice A is the wrong one.

Elaborate brain mechanisms, I thought of them as well developed and to include a large number of neurons. Am I doing a Mistaken Reversal?

Since we have: Flexible-->Large Number of Neurons
and the answer choice is saying if you have an Elaborate Brain (I assumed with a large number of neurons--than you have a flexible brain.

Thanks in advance!
Ellen

Hello Ellen,

Yes, answer choice A is mistaken-reversalish, or close. Flexible behavior needs plenty of neurons, but that doesn't mean that relatively large-brained (compared to insects) folks like humans do **mostly** non-instinctual stuff. Maybe the vast majority of what we do is instinctual, whether breathing or what-have-you.

Hope that helps,
David

[ellenb]

So, if it said that large brained folks do mostly non-instinctual, but we cannot prove that
we just know that To have Non-Instinctual behavior-->one must have a large number of neurons?

Thanks in advance!

Ellen

[David Boyle]

So, if it said that large brained folks do mostly non-instinctual, but we cannot prove that
we just know that To have Non-Instinctual behavior-->one must have a large number of neurons?

Thanks in advance!

Ellen

Hello,

Forgive me, I'm not sure I understand your grammar above. If it could be reworded maybe...Thanks,

David

[ellenb]

Sorry, about that, that is what happens when you type too fast.

So, basically what I meant:

large brained folks ---> mostly non-instinctual (answer choice A)

However, we cannot prove the statement above, since we have the diagram below based on the stimulus:
To have Non-Instinctual behavior-->one must have a large number of neurons

(It seems like the answer choice A, is a mistaken reversal, sort of)

How about answer choice D?

Thanks in advance!

Ellen

[KelseyWoods]

Hi Ellen!

Answer choice (D) is incorrect because the stimulus doesn't tell us anything about organisms with large brains. The only specific organisms we're told anything about are insects, which have small brains. We know that because they have small brains, they aren't capable of flexible behavior but that doesn't mean that just because an organism has a large brain it necessarily is capable of flexible behavior.

Hope that helps!

Best,
Kelsey

[ellenb]

thus, large number of neurons and large brains it is not the same? and I guess we would do an unjustified assumption to say that they equal.

Thanks

[BethRibet]

Hi Ellen,

Yes, you're on just the right track now. We can't assume that a large number of neurons equates to a large brain or vice versa without a more explicit premise that supports that assumption.

Good work!

Beth

[ellenb]

Dear Powerscore,

I had a question about this question:

So, did they assume in the stimulus that, instinctual (flexible) and instinctual are contrapositives?

For answer choices C and D did they just make an assumptions, or they wanted to trick people to think that large brain size or larger than that of an insect will equal to large number of neurons?

And for A and E, they assumed as well as for the other wrong answers they assumed that we have knowledge about other organisms when we have knowledge of only about brains of insects.

Also, we did not really have to use the first part of the stimulus other than getting the CP of noninstinctual = flexible, correct?

I diagrammed just the last part: flexible-->large neurons

insect--> not large neurons-->not flexible---> instinctual


Regards,

Ellen