By attributing to commentators the view that philosophical anarchism has implications that are "counterintuitive" (li...

Emil-Kunkin on June 24, 2023

Hi, let's start by thinking about what the word counterintuitive generally means. I would usually define it as something along the lines of "a statement or idea that appears to be contrary or opposed to common sense or general experience." Some examples of this might be the idea that you could gain a military advantage by retreating, or that you could raise more revenue by cutting taxes (not that their of these things are true, but I would describe them as counterintuitive).

Then, let's see if this is the way the author uses the term in line 17. The claims in question that the author describes as counterintuitive are that no government is better than any other, and that people may simply do as they please. These do seem to be more or less counterintuitive in the way that I described, so we would expect the answer choice would likely convey some sense of being opposed to common sense or general consensus.

This is a decent match for a. Conflicting with commonly held beliefs is a pretty good summation of what it means to be counterintuitive, both in a general sense and how the author used it.