Distressed By His Own Personal Tragedies, The Roman Philosopher Cicero GMAT Critical Reasoning

Question: Distressed by his own personal tragedies, the Roman philosopher Cicero once asked himself whether a wise person should try to achieve the Stoic ideal of complete emotionlessness. Cicero reasoned that, however desirable the goal may be, a wise person could never attain it, since emotions are not simply irrational urges. They are, rather, a product of one's estimate of the goodness and badness of the events, people, and actions one witnesses.

Which of the following is an assumption required by Cicero's reasoning?

  1. Wise people inevitably evaluate at least some of the things they observe.
  2. Irrationality makes evaluation of what one observes impossible.
  3. Wisdom precludes attempting to attain what one cannot.
  4. If evaluations are based only on reason, then they are inaccurate.
  5. A wise person will not evaluate what cannot be directly observed.

Answer: A
Explanation
:

  1. Wise people inevitably evaluate at least some of the things they observe. The given statement is correct because it is true to say that wise people evaluate at least some of the stuff they observe in order to form an emotion, since emotions are a product of observations.
     
  2. Irrationality makes evaluation of what one observes impossible. The given statement is incorrect because we can possibly make a logical link that wise people are generally not irrational, the behavior of irrational people does not impact the argument.
     
  3. Wisdom precludes attempting to attain what one cannot. The given statement is incorrect because it explains that wisdom prevents humans from trying to attain things that they cannot. The conclusion is that a wise person could not attain emotionlessness. Whether a wise person tries and still does not attain, or does not even try and thus does not attain, the argument holds.
     
  4. If evaluations are based only on reason, then they are inaccurate. The given statement is incorrect because we can't support the gap in reason and accuracy of evaluations. We know that evaluations are made by wise people and that evaluations form emotions, but we don't know that evaluations based on reason are inaccurate.
     
  5. A wise person will not evaluate what cannot be directly observed. The given statement is incorrect because a wise person will evaluate what can be directly observed.

“Distressed by his own personal tragedies, the Roman philosopher Cicero”- is a question of critical reasoning in a section of GMAT Verbal Reasoning. It examines the logical reasoning of the candidate in the test. The Critical Reasoning question type is used to measure critical business skills. GMAT Critical Reasoning questions assess a distinct set of qualities associated with logic. The students preparing for the GMAT will experience the argument analysis of Critical Reasoning for the first time to substantiate their logic.

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