A university professor has claimed that there is no correct answer to question 17, which was regarded as highly difficult, on the Korean section of the recently administered 2026 College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT).
According to the education sector on the 19th, Lee Chung-hyung, a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Pohang University of Science and Technology POSTECH, wrote on a test-takers' community board, saying, "I heard there was a question related to Kant on the CSAT Korean exam, so I tried it, and it looked like question 17 had no answer."
Question 17 in the Korean section is structured to have the test-taker read a passage outlining German philosopher Immanuel Kant's view on personal identity and then answer a question.
Question 17 presents the claim by "A" that when consciousness occurring in the brain is scanned and reproduced as a program, the original self and the reproduced consciousness are not the same person, and then asks for the most appropriate response that shows an understanding of this.
The answer released by the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation is choice 3: "According to the view that was influential before Kant, the persistence of the 'thinking self' alone does not guarantee personal identity, so A's position would not be correct."
However, Lee argued that A's position is correct, so choice 3 cannot be the answer.
In the passage, the introductory sentence reads, "Until Kant, an influential view explaining personal identity was that the soul, which is the 'thinking self,' persists over time as a single subject."
But if consciousness is reproduced by a scanning program, the condition of a "single subject" is not met, so A's position that "the persistence of the thinking self alone does not guarantee personal identity" is correct.
Lee also said, "One might think this is a problem solvable by 'if a=b and a has property C, then b also has property C' for individuals a and b and property C, but this seemingly obvious solution is in fact incorrect."
Lee said, "A is talking about the 'thinking self,' not about the soul, so a link between the 'thinking self' and the 'soul' is needed," and added, "The only link between the two is the expression 'the soul that is the thinking self,' but that expression appears nowhere in the passage or the choices."
Lee has a record of being selected for The Philosopher's Annual's "Top 10 philosophy papers of 2022" with a paper on the status of zygotes and early embryos that uses the concept of "numerical identity," which is related to question 17 on the Korean section.
Lee Hae-hwang, a well-known instructor in reading comprehension and logic, also posted a YouTube video sharing the same view as Lee. The instructor said, "Professor Lee sent me this argument by email, and after careful review, I reached the same conclusion."