XAT Mock Test - 7 (New Pattern) - CAT MCQ

Directions: Read the following passage and answer these questions.

The British are rubbishing us, literally. Tory MP Lucy Lvimy is reported to have said that Indians don’t know how to dispose of their rubbish and are congenital litterbugs. Though she Later apologised for her remark, Ivimy’s accusation provoked dudgeon among Indians in not only Britain but, even more so, in India. Us Indians ? Creating a mess wherever we go ? What a load of garbage.

Unlike people in the West and other so-called developed societies we Indians are scrupulously particular about all matters pertaining to hygiene management and waste disposal. Take the example of household garbage. What do they do with it in these so-called advanced countries ? They store it— as though these scrapes of leftover food, vegetable peelings, egg shells and other guck were precious jewels in a special container made for the purpose and generally kept in the kitchen. How thoroughly disgusting. Imagine keeping rotting refuse in the kitchen, which after the Puja room is the most hallowed sanctum sanctorum of the Indian household.

A barbaric notion totally inimical to 5000 years of Indic civilisation and culture based on the totems and taboos or ritual pollution, which is based on the concept of what has been called inappropriate context. For instance, it is appropriate to wear shoes to go outdoors but it is inappropriate (ritually polluting) to wear shoes indoors, more os within a place of worship. Similarly, keeping ritually polluting garbage within the kitchen and defiling its symbolic purity is an emphatic no-no. So what to do with the muck? Simple. Throw it out of the window. That’s what windows are for, apart from letting in air and light. The scrupulous cleanliness of us Indians is attested to by the assiduity with which we expel all forms of rubbish. Garbage, junk and litter from our homes and places of work and dump such offending and offensive matter where it rightly belongs : on our public streets and thoroughfares.

This is what less anciently civilised communities can’t understand about us: the cordon sanitaire that we draw between our pure, pollution-free personal space (our homes, offices, etc) and the public space of the outside world at large (i.e., anything and everything beyond the sacrosanct confines of our homes, offices, etc) which we rightly use for the purpose it has obviously been designed, namely to be the natural receptacle of all our filth and rubbish. That the ‘outside’ India of our public space is unmitigatedly dirty and squalid only testifies to the fact that the inside ‘India of our personal domains is squeaky-clean and spotless.

There is a profound chasm, not just cultural but spiritual, between us and societies and individuals, who, are obsessed about ‘outside’ (and therefore irrelevant) cleanliness at the expense of ‘inner’ salubrity. It is this basic misapprehension of the uniquely Indian concept of sanitation that causes outsiders to trash us. Which they are once more planning to do at the forthcoming G-8 meet where the US and Japan will try to arm-twist India into accepting emission norms for industry.

This Western phobia about carbon emissions is incomprehensible to the Indian mind. Carbons are dirty things, right? In which case why are people so hung up about emitting them (ie, getting rid of the darn things, like chucking garbage out of the window)? But people like Al Gore (and now our very own R K Pachauri) carry on something fierce about carbon emissions and how horrid they are (all the more reason to be shot of all that nasty carbon and dump it where it properly belongs. in the global public space known as the environment.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is proposing to go to the G-8 Summit, where presumably he will try to educate the US, Japan and other misinformed parties about the right and proper manner in which to deal with industrial emissions and all that rot. Will someone open the window, please ?

Statement A : Moreover, as argued above, knowledge is entailed not by way of justification as such but by the realization of good or fruit ladenness of meaning and actions or iterated actions.

Statement B : Knowledge is required in order to resolve double and thus in order to act meaningfully.

Statement C : Therefore the action in a commonly led daily life are both meaningful and knowledge-driven.

Statement D : Indian theorists argue for a common knowledge, which is obtained through iterated fruitful actions, through the authority of sentences (or words).

Statement E : We argue for four sources of validation of knowledge, viz., sentence, inference, direct perception and analogy.

Directions: Read the following passage and answer these questions.

The British are rubbishing us, literally. Tory MP Lucy Lvimy is reported to have said that Indians don’t know how to dispose of their rubbish and are congenital litterbugs. Though she Later apologised for her remark, Ivimy’s accusation provoked dudgeon among Indians in not only Britain but, even more so, in India. Us Indians ? Creating a mess wherever we go ? What a load of garbage.

Unlike people in the West and other so-called developed societies we Indians are scrupulously particular about all matters pertaining to hygiene management and waste disposal. Take the example of household garbage. What do they do with it in these so-called advanced countries ? They store it— as though these scrapes of leftover food, vegetable peelings, egg shells and other guck were precious jewels in a special container made for the purpose and generally kept in the kitchen. How thoroughly disgusting. Imagine keeping rotting refuse in the kitchen, which after the Puja room is the most hallowed sanctum sanctorum of the Indian household.

A barbaric notion totally inimical to 5000 years of Indic civilisation and culture based on the totems and taboos or ritual pollution, which is based on the concept of what has been called inappropriate context. For instance, it is appropriate to wear shoes to go outdoors but it is inappropriate (ritually polluting) to wear shoes indoors, more os within a place of worship. Similarly, keeping ritually polluting garbage within the kitchen and defiling its symbolic purity is an emphatic no-no. So what to do with the muck? Simple. Throw it out of the window. That’s what windows are for, apart from letting in air and light. The scrupulous cleanliness of us Indians is attested to by the assiduity with which we expel all forms of rubbish. Garbage, junk and litter from our homes and places of work and dump such offending and offensive matter where it rightly belongs : on our public streets and thoroughfares.

This is what less anciently civilised communities can’t understand about us: the cordon sanitaire that we draw between our pure, pollution-free personal space (our homes, offices, etc) and the public space of the outside world at large (i.e., anything and everything beyond the sacrosanct confines of our homes, offices, etc) which we rightly use for the purpose it has obviously been designed, namely to be the natural receptacle of all our filth and rubbish. That the ‘outside’ India of our public space is unmitigatedly dirty and squalid only testifies to the fact that the inside ‘India of our personal domains is squeaky-clean and spotless.

There is a profound chasm, not just cultural but spiritual, between us and societies and individuals, who, are obsessed about ‘outside’ (and therefore irrelevant) cleanliness at the expense of ‘inner’ salubrity. It is this basic misapprehension of the uniquely Indian concept of sanitation that causes outsiders to trash us. Which they are once more planning to do at the forthcoming G-8 meet where the US and Japan will try to arm-twist India into accepting emission norms for industry.

This Western phobia about carbon emissions is incomprehensible to the Indian mind. Carbons are dirty things, right? In which case why are people so hung up about emitting them (ie, getting rid of the darn things, like chucking garbage out of the window)? But people like Al Gore (and now our very own R K Pachauri) carry on something fierce about carbon emissions and how horrid they are (all the more reason to be shot of all that nasty carbon and dump it where it properly belongs. in the global public space known as the environment.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is proposing to go to the G-8 Summit, where presumably he will try to educate the US, Japan and other misinformed parties about the right and proper manner in which to deal with industrial emissions and all that rot. Will someone open the window, please ?

Statement A: But PST has also used satellite pictures of suggest that an ancient fortified town had existed 30 km from Junagadh.

Statement B: Soil and vegetation patterns were used in the search.

Statement C: The site matches the description of Krishna’s town in an ancient scripture.

Statement D: PST’s primary job at Space Applications Centre has been tracking land use and forest cover with satellite images.

Statement E: An archeologist however cautioned that remote sensing and scriptures by themselves would not be enough to identify a township.

Statement F: It was claimed that soli and vegetation patterns at ancient abandoned sites reveal specific patterns that can be picked by satellite images.

Directions: These questions are based on the given passage below.

Deliberative democracy demands a reflexive (or reflection driven) reordering of preferences in a non-coercive manner. The authenticity of democracy requires in addition that these reflective preferences influence collective outcomes and action, and so long as the state is the main (though far from exclusive) locus of collective decisions it requires discursive mechanisms for transmission of public opinion to the state. A deliberative or more properly a discursive democracy, in order that it can accommodate several competing versions of democracies such as the liberal. The minimal, the difference, etc must also accommodate rhetoric. narratives and empathy along with reasoning. A rationality and a reasoning that does not accommodate values is meaningless. However, it is also argued that individual rationality cannot be realized if values are embedded in the decision procedures, in other words, realization of values could be made possible only when individuals behave non-rationally. Further if values having been abandoned at the individual level are accorded a place only collectively, the same must lead to either ‘‘epistemological inconsistency or abandonment of autonomy of individual evaluations’’. A talk or a rhetoric, otherwise is strategic and is employed with the intention of signalling certain information. Such a talk can be, therefore, deceptive and coercive. The illocutionary force and the normative trappings of a Foucauldian discourse, while allowing identification with a community and differences with the others, do simultaneously pose through coercion a threat to an utterance as such. If democracy cannot ensure utterance as freedom and if the illocutionary forces in a discursive democracy disciplines the thought and the talk, then how such a democracy could indeed be called authentic.

Most human actions and discourses are actuated by a deeper or primordial ante-deliberation Desire (let us use a capital ‘D’). Speaking as such is out of such a desire (one might use volition or passion). Engaging in a deliberation or else in an action is possible only since there has been such a desire. Desire appears to both the reflection and also to an observer as a mental-state. A discourse can be set only when such mental states are in harmony, or share a common predisposition or attitude. In the absence of such shared mental-states, no discourse and no deliberation can begin. A running underlying and most often unstated theme that remains at the back of the idea of deliberative democracy is competition–a competition with the ‘other’ which introduces strategy. The alternative to competition, a mental-state, which is out of a desire to enjoy the ‘other’ in the light of a memory that this ‘one’ and the ‘other’ were but the same and would again become the same, do not appear in the known Anglo-American literature. Such a mental-state might generate and keep alive possibilities of cooperation although is never a state of cooperation alone as such.

Which of the following follows from the passage above?

Directions: These questions are based on the given passage below.

Deliberative democracy demands a reflexive (or reflection driven) reordering of preferences in a non-coercive manner. The authenticity of democracy requires in addition that these reflective preferences influence collective outcomes and action, and so long as the state is the main (though far from exclusive) locus of collective decisions it requires discursive mechanisms for transmission of public opinion to the state. A deliberative or more properly a discursive democracy, in order that it can accommodate several competing versions of democracies such as the liberal. The minimal, the difference, etc must also accommodate rhetoric. narratives and empathy along with reasoning. A rationality and a reasoning that does not accommodate values is meaningless. However, it is also argued that individual rationality cannot be realized if values are embedded in the decision procedures, in other words, realization of values could be made possible only when individuals behave non-rationally. Further if values having been abandoned at the individual level are accorded a place only collectively, the same must lead to either ‘‘epistemological inconsistency or abandonment of autonomy of individual evaluations’’. A talk or a rhetoric, otherwise is strategic and is employed with the intention of signalling certain information. Such a talk can be, therefore, deceptive and coercive. The illocutionary force and the normative trappings of a Foucauldian discourse, while allowing identification with a community and differences with the others, do simultaneously pose through coercion a threat to an utterance as such. If democracy cannot ensure utterance as freedom and if the illocutionary forces in a discursive democracy disciplines the thought and the talk, then how such a democracy could indeed be called authentic.

Most human actions and discourses are actuated by a deeper or primordial ante-deliberation Desire (let us use a capital ‘D’). Speaking as such is out of such a desire (one might use volition or passion). Engaging in a deliberation or else in an action is possible only since there has been such a desire. Desire appears to both the reflection and also to an observer as a mental-state. A discourse can be set only when such mental states are in harmony, or share a common predisposition or attitude. In the absence of such shared mental-states, no discourse and no deliberation can begin. A running underlying and most often unstated theme that remains at the back of the idea of deliberative democracy is competition–a competition with the ‘other’ which introduces strategy. The alternative to competition, a mental-state, which is out of a desire to enjoy the ‘other’ in the light of a memory that this ‘one’ and the ‘other’ were but the same and would again become the same, do not appear in the known Anglo-American literature. Such a mental-state might generate and keep alive possibilities of cooperation although is never a state of cooperation alone as such.

Desire as ante-deliberation driving action refer to

Directions: These questions are based on the given passage below.

Deliberative democracy demands a reflexive (or reflection driven) reordering of preferences in a non-coercive manner. The authenticity of democracy requires in addition that these reflective preferences influence collective outcomes and action, and so long as the state is the main (though far from exclusive) locus of collective decisions it requires discursive mechanisms for transmission of public opinion to the state. A deliberative or more properly a discursive democracy, in order that it can accommodate several competing versions of democracies such as the liberal. The minimal, the difference, etc must also accommodate rhetoric. narratives and empathy along with reasoning. A rationality and a reasoning that does not accommodate values is meaningless. However, it is also argued that individual rationality cannot be realized if values are embedded in the decision procedures, in other words, realization of values could be made possible only when individuals behave non-rationally. Further if values having been abandoned at the individual level are accorded a place only collectively, the same must lead to either ‘‘epistemological inconsistency or abandonment of autonomy of individual evaluations’’. A talk or a rhetoric, otherwise is strategic and is employed with the intention of signalling certain information. Such a talk can be, therefore, deceptive and coercive. The illocutionary force and the normative trappings of a Foucauldian discourse, while allowing identification with a community and differences with the others, do simultaneously pose through coercion a threat to an utterance as such. If democracy cannot ensure utterance as freedom and if the illocutionary forces in a discursive democracy disciplines the thought and the talk, then how such a democracy could indeed be called authentic.

Most human actions and discourses are actuated by a deeper or primordial ante-deliberation Desire (let us use a capital ‘D’). Speaking as such is out of such a desire (one might use volition or passion). Engaging in a deliberation or else in an action is possible only since there has been such a desire. Desire appears to both the reflection and also to an observer as a mental-state. A discourse can be set only when such mental states are in harmony, or share a common predisposition or attitude. In the absence of such shared mental-states, no discourse and no deliberation can begin. A running underlying and most often unstated theme that remains at the back of the idea of deliberative democracy is competition–a competition with the ‘other’ which introduces strategy. The alternative to competition, a mental-state, which is out of a desire to enjoy the ‘other’ in the light of a memory that this ‘one’ and the ‘other’ were but the same and would again become the same, do not appear in the known Anglo-American literature. Such a mental-state might generate and keep alive possibilities of cooperation although is never a state of cooperation alone as such.

Which of the following is true from the passage?

Directions: These questions are based on the given passage below.

Deliberative democracy demands a reflexive (or reflection driven) reordering of preferences in a non-coercive manner. The authenticity of democracy requires in addition that these reflective preferences influence collective outcomes and action, and so long as the state is the main (though far from exclusive) locus of collective decisions it requires discursive mechanisms for transmission of public opinion to the state. A deliberative or more properly a discursive democracy, in order that it can accommodate several competing versions of democracies such as the liberal. The minimal, the difference, etc must also accommodate rhetoric. narratives and empathy along with reasoning. A rationality and a reasoning that does not accommodate values is meaningless. However, it is also argued that individual rationality cannot be realized if values are embedded in the decision procedures, in other words, realization of values could be made possible only when individuals behave non-rationally. Further if values having been abandoned at the individual level are accorded a place only collectively, the same must lead to either ‘‘epistemological inconsistency or abandonment of autonomy of individual evaluations’’. A talk or a rhetoric, otherwise is strategic and is employed with the intention of signalling certain information. Such a talk can be, therefore, deceptive and coercive. The illocutionary force and the normative trappings of a Foucauldian discourse, while allowing identification with a community and differences with the others, do simultaneously pose through coercion a threat to an utterance as such. If democracy cannot ensure utterance as freedom and if the illocutionary forces in a discursive democracy disciplines the thought and the talk, then how such a democracy could indeed be called authentic.

Most human actions and discourses are actuated by a deeper or primordial ante-deliberation Desire (let us use a capital ‘D’). Speaking as such is out of such a desire (one might use volition or passion). Engaging in a deliberation or else in an action is possible only since there has been such a desire. Desire appears to both the reflection and also to an observer as a mental-state. A discourse can be set only when such mental states are in harmony, or share a common predisposition or attitude. In the absence of such shared mental-states, no discourse and no deliberation can begin. A running underlying and most often unstated theme that remains at the back of the idea of deliberative democracy is competition–a competition with the ‘other’ which introduces strategy. The alternative to competition, a mental-state, which is out of a desire to enjoy the ‘other’ in the light of a memory that this ‘one’ and the ‘other’ were but the same and would again become the same, do not appear in the known Anglo-American literature. Such a mental-state might generate and keep alive possibilities of cooperation although is never a state of cooperation alone as such.

A Foucauldian discourse as used in the passage does not refer to

Directions: These questions are based on the given passage below.

Deliberative democracy demands a reflexive (or reflection driven) reordering of preferences in a non-coercive manner. The authenticity of democracy requires in addition that these reflective preferences influence collective outcomes and action, and so long as the state is the main (though far from exclusive) locus of collective decisions it requires discursive mechanisms for transmission of public opinion to the state. A deliberative or more properly a discursive democracy, in order that it can accommodate several competing versions of democracies such as the liberal. The minimal, the difference, etc must also accommodate rhetoric. narratives and empathy along with reasoning. A rationality and a reasoning that does not accommodate values is meaningless. However, it is also argued that individual rationality cannot be realized if values are embedded in the decision procedures, in other words, realization of values could be made possible only when individuals behave non-rationally. Further if values having been abandoned at the individual level are accorded a place only collectively, the same must lead to either ‘‘epistemological inconsistency or abandonment of autonomy of individual evaluations’’. A talk or a rhetoric, otherwise is strategic and is employed with the intention of signalling certain information. Such a talk can be, therefore, deceptive and coercive. The illocutionary force and the normative trappings of a Foucauldian discourse, while allowing identification with a community and differences with the others, do simultaneously pose through coercion a threat to an utterance as such. If democracy cannot ensure utterance as freedom and if the illocutionary forces in a discursive democracy disciplines the thought and the talk, then how such a democracy could indeed be called authentic.

Most human actions and discourses are actuated by a deeper or primordial ante-deliberation Desire (let us use a capital ‘D’). Speaking as such is out of such a desire (one might use volition or passion). Engaging in a deliberation or else in an action is possible only since there has been such a desire. Desire appears to both the reflection and also to an observer as a mental-state. A discourse can be set only when such mental states are in harmony, or share a common predisposition or attitude. In the absence of such shared mental-states, no discourse and no deliberation can begin. A running underlying and most often unstated theme that remains at the back of the idea of deliberative democracy is competition–a competition with the ‘other’ which introduces strategy. The alternative to competition, a mental-state, which is out of a desire to enjoy the ‘other’ in the light of a memory that this ‘one’ and the ‘other’ were but the same and would again become the same, do not appear in the known Anglo-American literature. Such a mental-state might generate and keep alive possibilities of cooperation although is never a state of cooperation alone as such.

Which of the following words is closest to the word ‘primordial’ as used in the passage above?

Directions: These questions are based on the given passage below.

Deliberative democracy demands a reflexive (or reflection driven) reordering of preferences in a non-coercive manner. The authenticity of democracy requires in addition that these reflective preferences influence collective outcomes and action, and so long as the state is the main (though far from exclusive) locus of collective decisions it requires discursive mechanisms for transmission of public opinion to the state. A deliberative or more properly a discursive democracy, in order that it can accommodate several competing versions of democracies such as the liberal. The minimal, the difference, etc must also accommodate rhetoric. narratives and empathy along with reasoning. A rationality and a reasoning that does not accommodate values is meaningless. However, it is also argued that individual rationality cannot be realized if values are embedded in the decision procedures, in other words, realization of values could be made possible only when individuals behave non-rationally. Further if values having been abandoned at the individual level are accorded a place only collectively, the same must lead to either ‘‘epistemological inconsistency or abandonment of autonomy of individual evaluations’’. A talk or a rhetoric, otherwise is strategic and is employed with the intention of signalling certain information. Such a talk can be, therefore, deceptive and coercive. The illocutionary force and the normative trappings of a Foucauldian discourse, while allowing identification with a community and differences with the others, do simultaneously pose through coercion a threat to an utterance as such. If democracy cannot ensure utterance as freedom and if the illocutionary forces in a discursive democracy disciplines the thought and the talk, then how such a democracy could indeed be called authentic.

Most human actions and discourses are actuated by a deeper or primordial ante-deliberation Desire (let us use a capital ‘D’). Speaking as such is out of such a desire (one might use volition or passion). Engaging in a deliberation or else in an action is possible only since there has been such a desire. Desire appears to both the reflection and also to an observer as a mental-state. A discourse can be set only when such mental states are in harmony, or share a common predisposition or attitude. In the absence of such shared mental-states, no discourse and no deliberation can begin. A running underlying and most often unstated theme that remains at the back of the idea of deliberative democracy is competition–a competition with the ‘other’ which introduces strategy. The alternative to competition, a mental-state, which is out of a desire to enjoy the ‘other’ in the light of a memory that this ‘one’ and the ‘other’ were but the same and would again become the same, do not appear in the known Anglo-American literature. Such a mental-state might generate and keep alive possibilities of cooperation although is never a state of cooperation alone as such.

Which of the following captures the spirit of the position that the author hints at through the phrase ‘alternative to competition’?

Read the passage and answer the questions that follow

Many readers, I suspect, will take the title of this article [Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things] as suggesting that women, fire, and dangerous things have something in common—say, that women are fiery and dangerous. Most feminists I’ve mentioned it to have loved the title for that reason, though some have hated it for the same reason. But the chain of inference—from conjunction to categorization to commonality—is the norm. The inference is based on the common idea of what it means to be in the same category: things are categorized together on the basis of what they have in common. The idea that categories are defined by common properties is not only our everyday folk theory of what a category is, it is also the principle technical theory—one that has been with us for more than two thousand years.

The classical view that categories are based on shared properties is not entirely wrong. We often do categorize things on that basis. But that is only a small part of the story. In recent years it has become clear that categorization is far more complex than that. A new theory of categorization, called prototype theory, has emerged. It shows that human categorization is based on principles that extend far beyond those envisioned in the classical theory. One of our goals is to survey the complexities of the way people really categorize. For example, the title of this book was inspired by the Australian aboriginal language Dyirbal, which has a category, balan, that actually includes women, fire, and dangerous things. It also includes birds that are not dangerous, as well as exceptional animals, such as the platypus, bandicoot, and echidna. This is not simply a matter of categorization by common properties.

Categorization is not a matter to be taken lightly. There is nothing more basic than categorization to our thought, perception, action and speech. Every time we see something as a kind of thing, for example, a tree, we are categorizing. Whenever we reason about kinds of things—chairs, nations, illnesses, emotions, any kind of thing at all—we are employing categories. Whenever we intentionally perform any kind of action, say something as mundane as writing with a pencil, hammering with a hammer, or ironing clothes, we are using categories. The particular action we perform on that occasion is a kind of motor activity, that is, it is in a particular category of motor actions. They are never done in exactly the same way, yet despite the differences in particular movements, they are all movements of a kind, and we know how to make movements of that kind. And any time we either produce or understand any utterance of any reasonable length, we are employing dozens if not hundreds of categories: categories of speech sounds, of words, of phrases and clauses, as well as conceptual categories. Without the ability to categorize, we could not function at all, either in the physical world or in our social and intellectual lives.

The author probably chose Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things as the title of the article because

I. he thought that since the Dyirbal placed all three items in the same category, women, fire, and dangerous things necessarily had something in common.

II. he was hoping to draw attention to the fact that because items have been placed in the same category doesn’t mean that they necessarily have anything in common

III. he wanted to use the Dyirbal classification system as an example of how primitive classifications are not as functional as contemporary Western classification systems.

Read the passage and answer the questions that follow

Many readers, I suspect, will take the title of this article [Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things] as suggesting that women, fire, and dangerous things have something in common—say, that women are fiery and dangerous. Most feminists I’ve mentioned it to have loved the title for that reason, though some have hated it for the same reason. But the chain of inference—from conjunction to categorization to commonality—is the norm. The inference is based on the common idea of what it means to be in the same category: things are categorized together on the basis of what they have in common. The idea that categories are defined by common properties is not only our everyday folk theory of what a category is, it is also the principle technical theory—one that has been with us for more than two thousand years.

The classical view that categories are based on shared properties is not entirely wrong. We often do categorize things on that basis. But that is only a small part of the story. In recent years it has become clear that categorization is far more complex than that. A new theory of categorization, called prototype theory, has emerged. It shows that human categorization is based on principles that extend far beyond those envisioned in the classical theory. One of our goals is to survey the complexities of the way people really categorize. For example, the title of this book was inspired by the Australian aboriginal language Dyirbal, which has a category, balan, that actually includes women, fire, and dangerous things. It also includes birds that are not dangerous, as well as exceptional animals, such as the platypus, bandicoot, and echidna. This is not simply a matter of categorization by common properties.

Categorization is not a matter to be taken lightly. There is nothing more basic than categorization to our thought, perception, action and speech. Every time we see something as a kind of thing, for example, a tree, we are categorizing. Whenever we reason about kinds of things—chairs, nations, illnesses, emotions, any kind of thing at all—we are employing categories. Whenever we intentionally perform any kind of action, say something as mundane as writing with a pencil, hammering with a hammer, or ironing clothes, we are using categories. The particular action we perform on that occasion is a kind of motor activity, that is, it is in a particular category of motor actions. They are never done in exactly the same way, yet despite the differences in particular movements, they are all movements of a kind, and we know how to make movements of that kind. And any time we either produce or understand any utterance of any reasonable length, we are employing dozens if not hundreds of categories: categories of speech sounds, of words, of phrases and clauses, as well as conceptual categories. Without the ability to categorize, we could not function at all, either in the physical world or in our social and intellectual lives.

According to the author,

I. categorizing is a fundamental activity of people.

II. whenever a word refers to a kind of thing, it signifies a category.

III. one has to be able to categorize in order to function in our culture.

Read the passage and answer the questions that follow

Many readers, I suspect, will take the title of this article [Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things] as suggesting that women, fire, and dangerous things have something in common—say, that women are fiery and dangerous. Most feminists I’ve mentioned it to have loved the title for that reason, though some have hated it for the same reason. But the chain of inference—from conjunction to categorization to commonality—is the norm. The inference is based on the common idea of what it means to be in the same category: things are categorized together on the basis of what they have in common. The idea that categories are defined by common properties is not only our everyday folk theory of what a category is, it is also the principle technical theory—one that has been with us for more than two thousand years.

The classical view that categories are based on shared properties is not entirely wrong. We often do categorize things on that basis. But that is only a small part of the story. In recent years it has become clear that categorization is far more complex than that. A new theory of categorization, called prototype theory, has emerged. It shows that human categorization is based on principles that extend far beyond those envisioned in the classical theory. One of our goals is to survey the complexities of the way people really categorize. For example, the title of this book was inspired by the Australian aboriginal language Dyirbal, which has a category, balan, that actually includes women, fire, and dangerous things. It also includes birds that are not dangerous, as well as exceptional animals, such as the platypus, bandicoot, and echidna. This is not simply a matter of categorization by common properties.

Categorization is not a matter to be taken lightly. There is nothing more basic than categorization to our thought, perception, action and speech. Every time we see something as a kind of thing, for example, a tree, we are categorizing. Whenever we reason about kinds of things—chairs, nations, illnesses, emotions, any kind of thing at all—we are employing categories. Whenever we intentionally perform any kind of action, say something as mundane as writing with a pencil, hammering with a hammer, or ironing clothes, we are using categories. The particular action we perform on that occasion is a kind of motor activity, that is, it is in a particular category of motor actions. They are never done in exactly the same way, yet despite the differences in particular movements, they are all movements of a kind, and we know how to make movements of that kind. And any time we either produce or understand any utterance of any reasonable length, we are employing dozens if not hundreds of categories: categories of speech sounds, of words, of phrases and clauses, as well as conceptual categories. Without the ability to categorize, we could not function at all, either in the physical world or in our social and intellectual lives.

Which one of the following facts would most weaken the significance of the author’s title?

Read the passage and answer the questions that follow

Many readers, I suspect, will take the title of this article [Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things] as suggesting that women, fire, and dangerous things have something in common—say, that women are fiery and dangerous. Most feminists I’ve mentioned it to have loved the title for that reason, though some have hated it for the same reason. But the chain of inference—from conjunction to categorization to commonality—is the norm. The inference is based on the common idea of what it means to be in the same category: things are categorized together on the basis of what they have in common. The idea that categories are defined by common properties is not only our everyday folk theory of what a category is, it is also the principle technical theory—one that has been with us for more than two thousand years.

The classical view that categories are based on shared properties is not entirely wrong. We often do categorize things on that basis. But that is only a small part of the story. In recent years it has become clear that categorization is far more complex than that. A new theory of categorization, called prototype theory, has emerged. It shows that human categorization is based on principles that extend far beyond those envisioned in the classical theory. One of our goals is to survey the complexities of the way people really categorize. For example, the title of this book was inspired by the Australian aboriginal language Dyirbal, which has a category, balan, that actually includes women, fire, and dangerous things. It also includes birds that are not dangerous, as well as exceptional animals, such as the platypus, bandicoot, and echidna. This is not simply a matter of categorization by common properties.

Categorization is not a matter to be taken lightly. There is nothing more basic than categorization to our thought, perception, action and speech. Every time we see something as a kind of thing, for example, a tree, we are categorizing. Whenever we reason about kinds of things—chairs, nations, illnesses, emotions, any kind of thing at all—we are employing categories. Whenever we intentionally perform any kind of action, say something as mundane as writing with a pencil, hammering with a hammer, or ironing clothes, we are using categories. The particular action we perform on that occasion is a kind of motor activity, that is, it is in a particular category of motor actions. They are never done in exactly the same way, yet despite the differences in particular movements, they are all movements of a kind, and we know how to make movements of that kind. And any time we either produce or understand any utterance of any reasonable length, we are employing dozens if not hundreds of categories: categories of speech sounds, of words, of phrases and clauses, as well as conceptual categories. Without the ability to categorize, we could not function at all, either in the physical world or in our social and intellectual lives.

If linguistic experts cannot perceive how women, fire, and dangerous things in the category balan have at least one thing in common, it follows that

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