About this video
Walks through a main idea question asking for the best pair of titles for two passages about Thomas Sowell's view of cosmic justice. Shows how to form your own main idea for each passage first, then eliminate answer choices that fail either passage.
You'll be able to
- state the main idea of a passage before checking the answer choices.
- eliminate title choices that fail one passage.
- explain why the correct answer must fit both passages.
Key words
- Main idea question
- A question asking for the best title or summary of a passage or pair of passages.
- Cosmic justice
- Sowell's idea of justice judged by overall outcomes, which the passage says humans cannot fully know.
- Traditional justice
- Justice judged by whether the process is fair.
- Elimination
- Removing answer choices that clearly fail one of the passages.
- Deterrence
- Discouraging wrongdoing by the threat of consequences.
Transcript
- [Instructor] Which one of the following pairs of titles would be most appropriate for Passage A and Passage B, respectively? This is a main idea question. Sometimes you'll see main idea questions that are in the form of, "What would be a great title for these passages or for this singular passage?"
So it helps here to have an idea of what the main idea of each of those passages was before we look at those choices. If you remember from the passage, passage A is about defining Sowell's conception of what cosmic justice is, in basically saying that, look we don't know enough in order to be omniscient beings, so we should not try to render cosmic justice.
And passage B was Sowell talking about the differences between traditional justice and cosmic justice, being that traditional justice is all about the justice wrapped into the process being fair so that's really what we're looking for here. Let's look at the choices.
A, Cosmic Justice meets Human Limitations. Okay, that looks pretty good. Passage B, the title would be Fairness as Process, here we have the process thing, versus Cosmic Fairness, so this was the traditional and cosmic was opposing the traditional. A is looking really good so choice B, Sowell's Theory of Justice.
Yes, that still works for Passage A. The Key to Deterrence, that's not the main idea of Passage B so that is not right. C, Just Deserts, presumably meaning you get what you deserve and, again, that isn't about the human inability to be omniscent so I'd say that's wrong for Passage A so we can just move on.
D, A Critique of Sowell. Well, no, I wouldn't say that Passage A critiques Sowell, doesn't pick fault with Sowell's theory, it just helps to explain what Sowell's theory is, and what his idea of cosmic justice is, so that's not right so we can move on. E, The Impossibility of Achieving Cosmic Justice, okay, that work's for Passage A, so what about Passage B?
Fair Trials versus Justice as Impartial Process. Fair trials is part of Passage B, but are they against justice as an impartial process? Those aren't against each other so he's wrong, and D and C we ruled out just from the first title. We don't even have to look at the second title.
A is clearly our best answer.
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