LNAT Ethics & Philosophy Practice Questions | Free Section A Drill

What ethics & philosophy passages test

You are not being tested on what philosophers have said. You are being tested on whether you can see how an argument is built: what it assumes without saying so, how an objection attacks it, and how a reply tries to rescue it. Thought experiments are common in these passages because they strip a question down to one clear case, which makes the structure of the argument easy to examine. Everything you need is in the passage.

Sample Passage

Ethics & Philosophy · Original practice passage · ~430 words

The Experience Machine

In Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974), the philosopher Robert Nozick asked his readers to imagine a machine that could give them any experience they wanted. Scientists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, making a friend or reading an interesting book, while all the time you were floating in a tank with electrodes attached to your head. You would not know you were in the machine; from the inside, the life it gave you would feel entirely real. Nozick's question was simple: would you plug in for life?

The question is aimed at a particular theory of well-being, usually called hedonism: the view that the only thing that makes a life go well for the person living it is how it feels, the balance of pleasant over unpleasant experience. If hedonism is true, the choice should be easy, because the machine can supply more pleasure and less pain than any ordinary life. Yet many people who consider the case say they would refuse. Nozick took that reluctance as evidence that we care about something beyond our experiences: we want actually to do certain things and to be a certain kind of person, not merely to have the sensation of doing so. If that is right, how a life feels from the inside cannot be the whole story of how well it goes.

Defenders of hedonism reply that the reluctance proves less than it seems. Our intuitions were formed in a world without such machines, and may reflect nothing more than distrust of the technology: a fear that it will break down, or that someone else will control it. Others suggest that the reluctance is simply a bias towards whatever situation we already occupy. If you learned that your present life had been lived in a machine all along, would you be eager to unplug? If not, the preference for reality may only be a preference for the familiar.

This reply is weaker than it looks. Suppose the machine were guaranteed never to fail, and suppose you were choosing on behalf of a child whose life had not yet begun, so that neither option was familiar. Many would still hesitate to choose, for someone they loved, a life of simulated achievements and simulated friendships. That hesitation is much harder to explain away as distrust or habit. It suggests that, whatever else a good life contains, it includes some contact with reality, friends who exist and achievements that are real, and that a life can feel perfect without being so.

Questions

1Nozick's argument against hedonism, as the second paragraph presents it, depends on which of the following assumptions?

People's reluctance to plug in reflects what they genuinely value, rather than some other cause such as fear that the machine might fail.
Pleasure adds nothing at all to how well a life goes.
A life in the machine would feel less real, from the inside, than an ordinary life.
Most people who refuse to plug in have thought carefully about hedonism.

Correct: (a). Nozick moves from "people would refuse" to "we care about something beyond our experiences". That step only works if the refusal tells you what people value. This is exactly the link the third paragraph attacks: if the reluctance comes from distrust or familiarity instead, it tells you nothing about hedonism. (b) is too strong: the argument only needs pleasure not to be the whole story, so you shouldn't pick an answer that says it counts for nothing. (c) contradicts the passage, which says the machine's life would "feel entirely real". (d) isn't needed: the argument relies on people's reluctance, not on how much they know about the theory.

2Which of the following most closely follows the same pattern of reasoning as the final paragraph?

A doctor tells a patient that because they feel well, there is no need for any further tests.
Someone claims that people prefer a famous wine only because they can see the label. When the labels are hidden, most people still choose it, which suggests the preference is about the wine itself.
A shop finds that customers spend more when music is playing, so it decides to play music all day.
A voter changes her mind after hearing a persuasive speech, and concludes that her earlier view must have been wrong.

Correct: (b). The final paragraph faces a claim that a preference has a misleading cause (distrust, habit). It changes the case to remove those causes, and finds that the preference survives, so the preference is probably genuine. Hiding the labels does the same job: it removes the suspected cause and checks whether the preference is still there. (a) reasons that feeling well means being well, which is closer to the hedonist view the passage argues against. (c) simply acts on an observed pattern; nothing is removed to test a rival explanation. (d) concerns a change of mind, not a test of what causes a preference.

3In the final paragraph, the phrase "explain away" most nearly means:

describe in more detail.
prove false by experiment.
account for in a way that removes its apparent significance.
make easier for other people to understand.

Correct: (c). To explain something away is to give an explanation that makes it stop counting as evidence. The defenders of hedonism tried to do this with the reluctance to plug in: it is "only" distrust or habit, so it shows nothing about value. The author says the new version of the case is harder to dismiss in that way. (a) and (d) treat "explain" in its everyday sense and miss the "away". (b) is too specific: nobody in the passage runs an experiment, and explaining something away is not the same as proving it false.

4How does the final paragraph respond to the objections raised in the third paragraph?

It accepts that the reluctance is mere habit, but argues that habits deserve to be respected.
It offers survey evidence showing that the objections are mistaken.
It argues that hedonism is correct for adults but not for children.
It changes the thought experiment to remove the factors the objections rely on, and argues that the hesitation remains.

Correct: (d). The objections blamed the reluctance on fear of failure and on familiarity. The author answers each in turn: the machine is "guaranteed never to fail", and choosing for an unborn child means "neither option was familiar". The claim is that the hesitation survives both changes. (a) gets the author's position backwards: the paragraph argues the hesitation is not just habit. (b) is wrong because the passage contains no survey or data; watch out for answers that invent evidence. (c) misreads the role of the child, who is there to remove familiarity, not to show that different theories apply to different people.

Tips for ethics & philosophy passages

Label each paragraph's job. Philosophy passages often run: a case, an argument, an objection, a reply. Knowing which paragraph is which answers many questions before you read the options.
Find the gap between the evidence and the conclusion. Assumption questions usually sit exactly where an argument jumps from "people feel X" to "X is true".
Notice when a thought experiment is changed. A new version of a case is almost always there to remove a factor that an objection relied on.
Don't answer with your own view. Whether you would plug in is irrelevant. The questions ask what the passage argues, not what you believe.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do ethics and philosophy passages appear on the LNAT?

LNAT Section A passages cover a wide range of subjects, and arguments about ethics and philosophy test exactly the skills it looks for: following an abstract argument step by step, spotting what it takes for granted, and seeing how an objection and a reply meet.

Do I need to have studied philosophy to answer these questions?

No. The LNAT does not test knowledge of philosophy. Every question can be answered using only the argument set out in the passage itself.

How is this different from a full LNAT practice test?

This page isolates one passage subject so you can drill a specific weak spot quickly. Lexcello's full practice tests combine 12 passages across all subjects, timed like the real 95-minute LNAT Section A.

LNAT Ethics & Philosophy Practice