Professor: One cannot frame an accurate conception of one's physical environment on the basis of a single momentary p...

shunhe on March 24, 2020

Hi @Yuer-Wang,

Thanks for the question! Let’s take a look at what the passage is doing here. We have a professor who starts off by telling us that people can’t frame an accurate conception of their physical environments based on a single momentary perception. This is a subsidiary conclusion supported by the following sentence, and which goes on to support the overall conclusion of the professor. Broken down into simple English, the professor is basically saying you can’t truly tell what’s going on around you physically based on a snapshot of one moment. Why does the professor believe this? Because each glimpse occurs from only one particular perspective; because each snapshot is always from one specific angle. The professor then goes on to complete her analogy, saying that this is similar to how history books only give distorted views of the past. This is the conclusion of the argument, being supported by all the other statements. Why? Because of the analogy, which holds because each book reflects the biases and prejudices of its author.

The question is asking us for how the professor’s argument proceeds. As discussed above, she is using a certain kind of analogical reasoning to have us conclude that the two cases should be thought of similarly. This is what answer choice (C) tells us. (C) tells us that the author is making a case for the conclusion of one argument (about the history books) by showing that argument’s resemblance to another, presumably cogent, argument (about forming an accurate conception about one’s physical environment based on a snapshot).

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any further questions that you might have.