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Difficult Weaken Question

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by [email protected] » Sun Jun 05, 2011 12:03 am
Determinism is the view that every event has a preceding cause sufficient for its occurrence. That is, if determinism is true, the events that are presently occurring could not have failed to occur, given the state of the universe a moment ago. Determinism, however, is a false view , because it. is impossible to know the complete state of the universe at any given time since it is impossible to measure accurately both the position and velocity of any given subatomic particle at a particular time.

The physicist's reasoning is most vulnerable to criticism on which one of the following grounds?

(A)That it is impossible to measure accurately both the position and velocity of any given subatomic particle does not imply that it is impossible to know either the position or the velocity of all subatomic particles.
(B)That the complete state of the universe at any given time is unknowable does not imply that the states at that time of the individual subatomic particles making it up are unknowable.
(C)That it is impossible to measure accurately both the position and the velocity of any given subatomic particle at a particular time does not imply that its position or velocity cannot be accurately measured separately.
(D)That it is impossible to know the complete state of the universe at any given time does not imply that there is no complete state of the universe at that time.
(E)That the position and the velocity of any given subatomic particle cannot be jointly measured with accuracy does not imply that this is the case for the position and velocity of all subatomic particles.







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Source: — Critical Reasoning |

by sivaelectric » Sun Jun 05, 2011 12:22 am
I guess A is right. :)
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by chilledlife » Sun Jun 05, 2011 12:32 am
Determinism is the view that every event has a preceding cause sufficient for its occurrence. That is, if determinism is true, the events that are presently occurring could not have failed to occur, given the state of the universe a moment ago. Determinism, however, is a false view , because it. is impossible to know the complete state of the universe at any given time since it is impossible to measure accurately both the position and velocity of any given subatomic particle at a particular time.

The physicists conclusion is that determinism is false. He adds that 'it is impossible to know the complete state of the universe'. We need to prove that determinism is true to weaken the conclusion. The key here is to link the two statements I have put in bold which talks about the state of the universe. I think most of the answer choices do not make any sense because they are not talking about determinism or supporting determinism being true.

My pick is D. The state of the universe is critical to the next event that is about to happen. This event will happen if we can measure the state of universe or not. Basically, this is because the universe exists.

All the other answers only talk about measuring the state of the universe which is irrelevant.
I hope my answer helps.
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by cans » Sun Jun 05, 2011 2:18 am
IMO D
if determinism is true, the events that are presently occurring could not have failed to occur, given the state of the universe a moment ago
Even if we can't know the complete state, doesn't imply that there is no complete state.
And if there is a complete state, then determinism will occur.
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by g.shankaran » Sun Jun 05, 2011 2:44 am
IMO D
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by lunarpower » Sun Jun 05, 2011 5:28 am
received a pm.

this looks suspiciously like an LSAT problem. is this an LSAT problem?
you should place a low priority on this problem, because something like this is extremely unlikely to show up on the GMAT.

basically, this argument says the following:
"determinism requires the universe to have a specific state.
therefore, because we can't know the specific state of the universe (because of blah blah blah blah position blah blah velocity blah blah blah), determinism is false."

the argument is thus confusing (a) whether we can know the state of the universe with (b) whether the universe has a state.
therefore (d).

... again, very, very low priority -- almost certainly an LSAT, not a GMAT, problem. do not use LSAT critical reasoning to study for the GMAT!
Ron has been teaching various standardized tests for 20 years.

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