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Contemporary cognitive scientists

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Contemporary cognitive scientists

by GmatGreen » Fri Jan 17, 2014 9:44 am
Contemporary cognitive scientists maintain that emotions, which are biological functions, evolved in the nervous system to help animals survive in hostile environments and procreate, and feelings are products of the conscious mind, reflecting the interpretation of emotions.

(A) procreate, and feelings are products of the conscious mind, reflecting

(B) procreate, and that feelings, as products of the conscious mind, reflecting

(C) procreate, and that feelings, which are products of the conscious mind, reflect

(D) to procreate, and feelings are products of the conscious mind, which reflect

(E) to procreate, and that feelings, which are products of the conscious mind, reflecting
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by Patrick_GMATFix » Fri Jan 17, 2014 9:55 am
The solution below is taken from the GMATFix App.

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by VivianKerr » Fri Jan 17, 2014 11:35 am
The main problem we have here is one of Meaning. We're comparing the idea of biological emotions to conscious feelings. The ideas contrast, so we need a construction that makes that clear.

Since we have the word "and" separating two ideas, with modifying clauses attached to them, wouldn't it be nice if these things were all parallel (the GMAT sure loves its parallelism!)?

Even before we look at the answer choices, sometimes it's helpful (and/or fun) to mentally "re-write" the sentence in your own way to see how you can add the parallelism and clarify the meaning.

Scientists maintain that EMOTIONS, which..., EVOLVED to help animals survive and procreate, WHILE FEELINGS, which..., REFLECT.

For Parallelism's sake, it'd be nice if the "feelings are products of the conscious mind" could be in a "which" clause too, and a nice transition word like "while" was added. We might not get all of these things, but we can hope. :-)

Let's start by removing what is not parallel: (A), (B), and (D) since that's a bonafide GMAT grammar error. (D) does include "which" but it doesn't modify "feelings," in the same way the first "which" clause modifies "emotions" so it's out.

Error #1: Parallelism

Now let's look closely at (C) and (E) to find a second error.

(E) confuses the meaning by adding the preceding "to" -- it's not that emotions evolved TO PROCREATE -- that makes no sense. Logically, it's the animals that are procreating. The verb tense "reflecting" is also an issue, but we can stop once we've found the first error.

Error #2: Meaning

Correct answer: (C)
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