PrepTest 71, Section 2, Question 14
Some philosophers explain visual perception by suggesting that when we visually perceive an object, a mental image of that object forms in our mind. However, this hypothesis cannot be correct, since it would require an inner self visually perceiving the newly formed mental image; this would in turn require that the inner self have a mental image of that mental image, and so on. But such an infinite regress is absurd.
Some philosophers explain visual perception by suggesting that when we visually perceive an object, a mental image of that object forms in our mind. However, this hypothesis cannot be correct, since it would require an inner self visually perceiving the newly formed mental image; this would in turn require that the inner self have a mental image of that mental image, and so on. But such an infinite regress is absurd.
Some philosophers explain visual perception by suggesting that when we visually perceive an object, a mental image of that object forms in our mind. However, this hypothesis cannot be correct, since it would require an inner self visually perceiving the newly formed mental image; this would in turn require that the inner self have a mental image of that mental image, and so on. But such an infinite regress is absurd.
Some philosophers explain visual perception by suggesting that when we visually perceive an object, a mental image of that object forms in our mind. However, this hypothesis cannot be correct, since it would require an inner self visually perceiving the newly formed mental image; this would in turn require that the inner self have a mental image of that mental image, and so on. But such an infinite regress is absurd.
Which one of the following arguments is most similar in its pattern of reasoning to the argument above?
According to some linguists, many of the world's languages can be traced back to a common source known as Indo-European. However, Indo-European cannot be the earliest language, for if it were, then there would be no language from which it was derived. But this is highly unlikely, given the overwhelming evidence that humans spoke long before the advent of Indo-European.
The claim that any scientific theory is adequate as long as it agrees with all the empirical data cannot be correct. For there are an infinite number of theories all of which account equally well for the empirical data, and they cannot all be true at the same time.
Some historians claim that no theory is ever genuinely new; no matter how clever a theory is, there is always a precedent theory that contains its gist. But if this were true, then every theory would have a precedent theory containing its gist, and this precedent theory would also have a precedent theory, and so on, without end. Since this is clearly impossible, the historians' claim must be false.
Some engineers define a structure's foundation as that part of the structure that supports the rest of the structure. This definition is unfortunate, however, because it evokes the suggestion that the foundation itself does not have any support, which, of course, is absurd.
Some people claim that the first library was the library of Alexandria, which for many centuries contained the largest collection of books in the world. However, Alexandria's collection was itself put together from smaller collections, small libraries in themselves. It follows that the library of Alexandria was not the first in the world.
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