Test Level 1: Inference and Application - CAT MCQ
10 Questions MCQ Test - Test Level 1: Inference and Application
Directions: The passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available, but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. A theologian proclaims eternal truths; the creeds remain unchanged since the Council of Nicea. Where nobody knows anything, there is no point in changing your mind.
Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far I can remember there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect, ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some other.
If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realise that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called education. This last is peculiarly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defencelessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practised in a greater or lesser degree in the school of every civilised country.
To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century. Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. He said also that children would be healthier if conceived when the wind is in the north. One gathers that the two Mrs. Aristotles had to run out and look at the weathercock every evening before going to bed. He states that a man bitten by a mad dog will not go mad, but any other animal will: that the bite of the shrew mouse is dangerous to horses, especially if the mouse is pregnant; that elephants suffering from insomnia can be cured by rubbing their shoulders with salt, olive oil, and warm water; and so on and so on. Nevertheless, classical dons, who have never observed any animal except the cat and the dog, continue to praise Aristotle for his fidelity to observation.
It is not altogether true that persuasion is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion – even many of which everybody approves - are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say to them: 'Some people think the earth is round, and others think it flat; when you grow up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion. Instead of this we say; ' The earth is round.' By the time our children are old enough to examine the evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds, and the most persuasive arguments of the Flat Earth Society make no impression. The same applies to the moral precepts that we consider really important, such as 'don't pick your nose' or 'don't eat peas with a knife'. There may, for aught I know, be admirable reasons for eating peas with a knife, but the hypnotic effect of early persuasion has made me completely incapable of appreciating them.
Archimedes used mathematics to kill Romans, Galileo to improve the Grand Duke of Tuscany's artillery, modern physicists (grown more ambitious) to exterminate the human race. It is usually on this account that the study of mathematics is commended to the general public as worthy of State support.
Q. The most notable feature of civilisation is that
Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far I can remember there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect, ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some other.
If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realise that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called education. This last is peculiarly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defencelessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practised in a greater or lesser degree in the school of every civilised country.
To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century. Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. He said also that children would be healthier if conceived when the wind is in the north. One gathers that the two Mrs. Aristotles had to run out and look at the weathercock every evening before going to bed. He states that a man bitten by a mad dog will not go mad, but any other animal will: that the bite of the shrew mouse is dangerous to horses, especially if the mouse is pregnant; that elephants suffering from insomnia can be cured by rubbing their shoulders with salt, olive oil, and warm water; and so on and so on. Nevertheless, classical dons, who have never observed any animal except the cat and the dog, continue to praise Aristotle for his fidelity to observation.
It is not altogether true that persuasion is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion – even many of which everybody approves - are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say to them: 'Some people think the earth is round, and others think it flat; when you grow up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion. Instead of this we say; ' The earth is round.' By the time our children are old enough to examine the evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds, and the most persuasive arguments of the Flat Earth Society make no impression. The same applies to the moral precepts that we consider really important, such as 'don't pick your nose' or 'don't eat peas with a knife'. There may, for aught I know, be admirable reasons for eating peas with a knife, but the hypnotic effect of early persuasion has made me completely incapable of appreciating them.
Archimedes used mathematics to kill Romans, Galileo to improve the Grand Duke of Tuscany's artillery, modern physicists (grown more ambitious) to exterminate the human race. It is usually on this account that the study of mathematics is commended to the general public as worthy of State support.
Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.
The domesticated cat is an incongruity. No other animal has developed such a personal relationship with humanity, while at the same time demanding and getting such independent movement and action. The cat manages to remain a domesticated animal because of the cycle of its rearing. Living both with other same species members (its mother and littermates) and with humans (the family that has adopted it) during its formative years and kittenhood, it becomes emotionally involved and considers that it belongs to both species. It is analogical to a kid who is brought up in an alien land and becomes bilingual. The juvenile cat becomes bimental. It has twofold psyche; it is a cat physically but mentally it is both feline and human. Once it is completely grown–up, however most of its responses are feline ones and it has only one main response to its human owners. It treats them as pseudo–parents. The rationale is that they took over from the real mother at a sensitive stage of the kitten's development and went on giving it milk, solid food, and comfort as it grew up.
This is quite dissimilar from the kind of attachment that develops between human and dog. The dog sees its human owners as pseudo parents, as does the cat. On that score the process of attachment is parallel. But the dog has an extra link. Canine the social order is group–organised; feline society is not. Dogs live in group with firmly controlled grade interaction among the individuals. There are top dogs, middle dogs, and bottom dogs and under normal circumstances they move around together, keeping check on each other the whole time. So the adult domesticated dog perceives its human family both as pseudo parents and as the dominant members of the pack, hence its prominent prestige for deference and its illustrious faculty for fidelity. Even though cats also have a complex social set up, but they never stalk in group. In the wild, most of their day is spent in solitary pursuit having a walk with a human, as a result, has no charm for them. For the same reasons, "gyrating", learning to "shake hands" and "stand", are some things that do not entice them at all. Such drills are just futile for them.
Therefore the second a cat makes its owner open the door, something that humans despise a lot, it just does not bother to see the reaction of its master and move off without a second glance. As it enters the open door it jumps the barrier and is transformed. The wild cat brain takes over small human–kitten brain. The dog, however in a similar circumstance, is tempted to look back and see if his master is joining him in the fun. The cat's mind has ventured into another, absolutely feline world, where weird and wonderful biped species have no place.
Owing to this major difference between domestic cats and domestic dogs, the feline admirers have a propensity to be rather different from canine admirers. As a rule, cat–lovers have a stronger personality bias toward working alone, independent on the larger group. Artists like cats; soldiers like dogs. The much–lauded "group loyalty" phenomenon is alien to both cats and cat–lovers.
Those who have studied cat–owners and dog–owners as two discrete groups report that there is also a gender predisposition. A majority of cat–lovers are female. This prejudice is not startling if the division of labour is taken into consideration in the process of development of human society. Primitive males became specialised as group–hunters, while the female's jobs were food–gathering and childbearing. This difference added to a human male "pack attitude" that is not very prominent in the females. Coyote, the untamed ancestors of domestic dogs, also became group–hunters, so the modern dog has much more in common with the human male than with the human female.
The argument will always go on – feline self–reliance and uniqueness versus canine camaraderie and good–fellowship. But it is vital to stress that in reality all of us, have both feline and canine basics in our characters.
Q. The passage stresses
This is quite dissimilar from the kind of attachment that develops between human and dog. The dog sees its human owners as pseudo parents, as does the cat. On that score the process of attachment is parallel. But the dog has an extra link. Canine the social order is group–organised; feline society is not. Dogs live in group with firmly controlled grade interaction among the individuals. There are top dogs, middle dogs, and bottom dogs and under normal circumstances they move around together, keeping check on each other the whole time. So the adult domesticated dog perceives its human family both as pseudo parents and as the dominant members of the pack, hence its prominent prestige for deference and its illustrious faculty for fidelity. Even though cats also have a complex social set up, but they never stalk in group. In the wild, most of their day is spent in solitary pursuit having a walk with a human, as a result, has no charm for them. For the same reasons, "gyrating", learning to "shake hands" and "stand", are some things that do not entice them at all. Such drills are just futile for them.
Therefore the second a cat makes its owner open the door, something that humans despise a lot, it just does not bother to see the reaction of its master and move off without a second glance. As it enters the open door it jumps the barrier and is transformed. The wild cat brain takes over small human–kitten brain. The dog, however in a similar circumstance, is tempted to look back and see if his master is joining him in the fun. The cat's mind has ventured into another, absolutely feline world, where weird and wonderful biped species have no place.
Owing to this major difference between domestic cats and domestic dogs, the feline admirers have a propensity to be rather different from canine admirers. As a rule, cat–lovers have a stronger personality bias toward working alone, independent on the larger group. Artists like cats; soldiers like dogs. The much–lauded "group loyalty" phenomenon is alien to both cats and cat–lovers.
Those who have studied cat–owners and dog–owners as two discrete groups report that there is also a gender predisposition. A majority of cat–lovers are female. This prejudice is not startling if the division of labour is taken into consideration in the process of development of human society. Primitive males became specialised as group–hunters, while the female's jobs were food–gathering and childbearing. This difference added to a human male "pack attitude" that is not very prominent in the females. Coyote, the untamed ancestors of domestic dogs, also became group–hunters, so the modern dog has much more in common with the human male than with the human female.
The argument will always go on – feline self–reliance and uniqueness versus canine camaraderie and good–fellowship. But it is vital to stress that in reality all of us, have both feline and canine basics in our characters.
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Directions: The passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
Freudian psychology interlinks dreams to be an outburst of repressed human emotions. Living in a society we are morally bound so we deny ourselves a few desires which probably sound unethical. These repressed feelings drastically affect our ego and causes anxiety, giving way to a few symbolic dreams.
Freud argued that an individual is often reticent and holds his urges stoically when awake. When asleep these same impulses provoke dreams. A firm believer of the theory that every action and thought has a cause probably entangled with the unconscious mind, he considered dreams to be the suppressed emotions in disguise. Every dream has a symbolic notation. It is a representation of our hidden pleasures and desires which our ego has guarded in day's light. In the blackness of night these pent up urges get outrageous and find way through dreams, even healthy minded dream. The suppression became the stimuli to these dreams. The content or stimuli to these dreams could relate to any present or past event of restriction. Freud's writing rejected the existence of dream interpreters or terminology explaining meanings of dream symbols. He said the significance of all dreams could be studied through personal experience as self analysis would be the best to study one's own fantasies. Probably these dreams would be misapprehended by others. This psycho analysis gave way to scientific erudition and research and soon became part of hypnosis. This became a password to all research of the sub consciousness. The dreams ultimately were realized as mere passivity of human aspirations. They were no side effect of indigestion or divine messages from the almighty. They were our own frustrations or desires. In an effort to maintain our sanity we tried to modify all objectionable stuff, inducing a stimulus to anxiety which would be released in sleep later on.
Q. What according to the passage instigates dreams?
Freud argued that an individual is often reticent and holds his urges stoically when awake. When asleep these same impulses provoke dreams. A firm believer of the theory that every action and thought has a cause probably entangled with the unconscious mind, he considered dreams to be the suppressed emotions in disguise. Every dream has a symbolic notation. It is a representation of our hidden pleasures and desires which our ego has guarded in day's light. In the blackness of night these pent up urges get outrageous and find way through dreams, even healthy minded dream. The suppression became the stimuli to these dreams. The content or stimuli to these dreams could relate to any present or past event of restriction. Freud's writing rejected the existence of dream interpreters or terminology explaining meanings of dream symbols. He said the significance of all dreams could be studied through personal experience as self analysis would be the best to study one's own fantasies. Probably these dreams would be misapprehended by others. This psycho analysis gave way to scientific erudition and research and soon became part of hypnosis. This became a password to all research of the sub consciousness. The dreams ultimately were realized as mere passivity of human aspirations. They were no side effect of indigestion or divine messages from the almighty. They were our own frustrations or desires. In an effort to maintain our sanity we tried to modify all objectionable stuff, inducing a stimulus to anxiety which would be released in sleep later on.
Directions: The passage below is followed by a question based on their content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
Sartre was not alone or wholly original in marrying phenomenology and existentialism into a single philosophy. Phenomenology had already undergone the profound transformation into ‘fundamental ontology’ at the hands of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger in his large, if incomplete, 1927 masterwork, Being and Time. The book is an examination of what it means to be, especially as this is disclosed through one’s own existence. The 1945 synthesis of phenomenology and existentialism in 'Phenomenology of Perception’ (Phenomenologie die la Perception) by Maurice Merleau – Ponty, Sartre’s philosophical friend and political antagonist, follows hard on the heels of Sartre’s own 1943 synthesis, Being and Nothingness with which it is partly inconsistent. Sartre’s existentialism, like that of Merleau Ponty, is ‘existential phenomenology’. Maurice Merleau–Ponty offers a phenomenology of the body which eschews mind–body dualism, reductivist materialism and idealism. He influenced Sartre politically and collaborated in editing Les Temps Modernes but broke with Sartre over what he saw as the latter’s ‘ultrabolshevism’.
Sartre’s Marxism was never a pure Marxism. Not only did he never join the PCF (Parti Communiste Francais), the second massive synthesis of his philosophical career was the fusion of Marxism with existentialism. The large 1960 first volume of ‘Critique of Dialectical Reason’ is an attempt to exhibit existentialist philosophy and Marxist political theory as not only mutually consistent but as mutually dependent: as dialectically requiring one another for an adequate understanding of human reality. This neo–Hegelian ‘totalizing’ philosophy promises us all the intellectual apparatus we need to understand the direction of history and the unique human individual in their complex mutual constitution. The German idealist philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770 – 1831) thought that philosophical problems could be exhibited as apparent contradictions that could be relieved, overcome or ‘synthesized’. Hence, for example, human beings are both free and causally determined, both mental and physical, social and individual, subjective and objective, and so on; not one to the exclusion of the other. ‘Synthetic’ or ‘totalizing’ philosophy shows seemingly mutually exclusive views to be not only compatible but mutually necessary.
Sartre’s Marxism is a ‘humanistic’ Marxism. His faith in Marxism as the most advanced philosophy of human liberation is tempered by his awareness of the crushing of the aspirations of the human individual by actual Marxism in, for example, the Soviet collectivization of the farms and purges of the 1930s and 1940s, the suppression of the Hungarian uprising of 1956, the decades of atrocities in the Soviet Gulag, the ending of the Prague Spring in 1968. Like the Austrian philosopher Karl Popper, Sartre does not think the oppression of the individual by communism is only a problem of political practice. He thinks Marxist political theory is misconstrued. Unlike Popper however, he seeks to humanize Marxist theory rather than reject it utterly. Also unlike Popper, he thinks the neglected resources for a theory of the freedom of the individual can be found within the early writings of Marx himself. The young Marx is to be construed as a kind of proto–existentialist.
The putative synthesis of existentialism and Marxism is extraordinarily ambitious. Some of the most fundamental and intractable problems of metaphysics and the philosophy of mind are obstacles to that synthesis. Classical Marxism is determinist and materialist. Sartre’s existentialism is libertarian and phenomenological. Marxism includes a theory of history with prescriptive prognoses for the future. Existentialism explores agency in a spontaneous present which bestows only a derivative existence on past and future. Marxism is a social theory in which class is the subject and object of change. In existentialism, individuals do things and things are done to individuals. Marxism has pretensions to be a science. Existentialism regards science as part of the very problem of dehumanization and alienation.
Despite the fact that Sartre’s overt anarchism emerges only at the end of his life – it is mainly professed in a series of interviews with the then secretary Benny Levy for the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur – Sartre also claimed in the 1970s that he had always been an anarchist.
Q. What can be the title of the passage?
Directions: The passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
THE DECADES-OLD proposal to link all of India's major rivers with one another was revived with much fanfare last year. Most political parties welcomed it then as a solution to the country's drinking water and irrigation problems. But it has not taken long for the proposal to come face to face with the hard reality of planning what will be the largest project ever taken up in India. A number of States, from Punjab in the north to Kerala in the south, have expressed their opposition to a transfer of river waters from their territory to other States. The latest example is the considerable anxiety in Kerala about including a link between the Pampa and the Achankovil (flowing through Kerala) and the Vaippar (in Tamil Nadu) in the proposed national river grid. This is only one of many reasons why the ambitious, many would say unrealistic. Schedules for execution of the project have already been thrown out of gear.
The high-level task force on the project, constituted in December 2002, was expected to prepare the schedule for completion of feasibility studies and estimate the cost of the project by the end of April this year. It was to then come up in June with the options for funding the project. It was also expected to convene a meeting in May/June of State Chief Ministers and obtain their agreement and cooperation. None of these deadlines has been met and there is no indication that these events will take place in the near future. This is not surprising, for while the interlinking proposal has been spoken about for decades, all the complex engineering, economic, environmental and social issues involved in the project have never been carefully studied. It is, therefore, not an easy task to draw up in a few months even the time lines for implementation. It will also be impossible to complete within a decade (as decreed by the Supreme Court) execution of a project that at first approximation is estimated to cost Rs. 5,60,000 crores, which is twice the size of India's gross domestic product at present. In fact, the one Government committee that did examine aspects of the proposal to some extent, the National Commission for an Integrated Water Resources Development Plan, was in 1999 ambivalent about the benefits of interlinking the country's rivers.
The drought of 2002 was the context in which the proposal to build a grid connecting India's rivers was revived. Before another drought leads to another round of active interest in the project, it is necessary to come up with answers to two broad sets of questions. The first question is, what will be the total costs and benefits of a river grid project in economic, environmental and social terms. The second will be, what are the different options to meet the future requirements of water and is the interlinking proposal the best among them. Answers to these questions will have to address issues in agricultural technology, patterns of water use, extraction of ground and surface water resources, efficiency in consumption of water in crop cultivation, resource mobilization, human displacement and changes in the environment. A plan on such a scale and of such complexity as the proposal to link the country's rivers can be taken up only after a range of such substantive issues are analyzed threadbare.
Q. What is the tone of the passage?
Directions: The passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
Liberia has been hemorrhaging heavily. Even before the recent fighting, humanitarian workers had access to barely a third of the country. Later, as the fighting grew more intense, the safety of those who could have saved the lives of others could no longer be ensured. Relief work ground to a halt. An already explosive humanitarian situation burst at the seams. Acute shortages of food and water are reported and cholera is rampant. The then cycle of violence cost a staggering 150,000 lives.
Liberia's suffering has prompted some to advocate a limited police action: go in quickly, shoot the law-breakers, restore security and feed the people. These sentiments are laudable. But humanitarian interventions that have to conjure up policing are fraught with not just collateral risks for those who are engaged. They also raise serious questions vis-vis national sovereignty. The international community has yet to clearly agree on the basis and scope of humanitarian interventions.
In the interim, peacekeeping appears to be an honourable compromise and first-aid to the suffering. Peacekeepers thus continue to be the most visible demonstration of humanity's concern for fellow human beings. However, the hiatus between the expectations of the suffering and what peacekeepers can do for them remains. Peacekeepers are erroneously expected to overwhelm unruly and rogue elements, punish the guilty and protect the innocent. The problem is that this expectation, though understandable, is antithetical to peacekeeping which in essence is non-judgmental. Based on consent, impartiality and use of force only for self-defense, the peacekeepers' first lesson is not to take sides. Punitive action, however desirable, does not therefore fall strictly as yet within the realm of peacekeeping. In fact, the United Nations Charter did not foresee peacekeeping at all. Against the backdrop of two world wars, the framers of the U.N. Charter envisaged collective security to deter an aggressor akin to the perpetrators of the two world wars. Thanks to the cold war it soon became apparent that aggressions of the world war kind may not be replicated and transnational conflicts could be contained from spiraling into a global war. The cold war also kept a lid on simmering ethnic and civil discontent. Inter-state conflicts were consequently relatively straightforward for the architects of peacekeeping. Parties came under heavy pressure to relent the moment they began hostilities. Frequently this led to a ceasefire. The ceasefire needed to hold lest breaches became a reason for fresh hostilities. Against this canvass, the presence of outside non-partisan elements was conceived as a practical measure to aid in the maintenance and consolidation of the truce. As a spin-off, this presence would contribute to a climate conducive for the parties to talk out their differences in calm, and to ease the plight of innocents.
With time, however, peacekeeping has had to undergo changes. A complex world has now rendered peacekeeping multifunctional. No more is peacekeeping limited to just observing truces or ceasefires. Humanitarian assistance has increasingly become the staple of peacekeeping. Demobilization, election monitoring, reconstruction, institution building and even administering - on an interim or transitional basis - are some of the myriad tasks that have come within peacekeeping's ambit.
But nowhere down the road had the original precepts of peacekeeping changed to a policing role for peacekeepers, at least not until Rwanda and Srebrenica violently challenged the status quo. Peacekeepers should not normally distinguish between perpetrators and victims; and even if they can they may not have the means to prevent a tragedy as seen in those cases. Therefore, without the means there is no use in sending peacekeepers just to be turned into casualty statistics. Yet for those who are struck by the horrors of a war brought to their doorsteps by cable television, and for those who bear the brunt of suffering these nuances are immaterial. The very precepts of the U.N. demand that we do not simply watch, but do something.
Yet it is unclear if the international community is more willing and able since then to commit itself to preventing such wrongs. Without that resolve and concomitant, determined involvement, an over-ambitious role for lightly-armed peacekeepers might render the exercise farcical.
Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.
Social life is an outflow and meeting of personality, which means that its end is the meeting of character, temperament, and sensibility, in which our thoughts and feelings, and sense perceptions are brought into play at their lightest and yet keenest.
My conception of social life is modest, for it makes no demands on what we have, though it does make some on what we are. Interest, wonder, sympathy, and love, the first two leading to the last two, are the psychological prerequisites for social life; and the need for the first two must not be underrated. We cannot make the most even of our intimate social life unless we are able to make strangers of our oldest friends everyday by discovering unknown areas in their personality, and transform them into new friends. In sum, social life is a function of vitality.
It is tragic, however, to observe that it is these very natural springs of social life, which are drying up among us. It is becoming more and more difficult to come across fellow feeling for human beings as such in our society and in all its strata. In the poor middle class, in the course of all my life, I have hardly seen any social life properly so-called. Not only has the grinding routine of making a living killed all desire for it in them, it has also generated a standing mood of peevish hostility to other human beings. Increasing economic distress in recent years has infinitely worsened this state of affairs, and has also brought sinister addition - class hatred. This has become the greatest collective emotional enjoyment of the poor middle class, and indeed they feel most social when they form a pack, and snarl or howl at people who are better off than they.
Their most innocent exhibition of sociability is seen when they spill out from their intolerable homes into the streets and bazaars. I was astonished to see the milling crowds in the poor suburbs of Calcutta. But even there a group of flippant young loafers would put on a conspiratorial look if they saw a man in good clothes passing by them either on foot or in a car. I had borrowed a car from a relative to visit a friend in one of these suburbs, and he became very anxious when I had not returned before dusk. Acid and bombs, he said, were thrown at cars almost every evening in that area. I was amazed. But I also know as a fact that my brother was blackmailed to pay five rupees on a trumped up charge when passing in a car through one such locality.
The situation is differently inhuman, but not a whit more human, among the well-to-do. Kindliness for fellow-human beings has been smothered in them, taken as a class, by the arrogance of worldly position, which among the Bengalis who show this snobbery is often only a third-class position.
Q. In this passage the author is essentially
Directions: The passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
Liberia has been hemorrhaging heavily. Even before the recent fighting, humanitarian workers had access to barely a third of the country. Later, as the fighting grew more intense, the safety of those who could have saved the lives of others could no longer be ensured. Relief work ground to a halt. An already explosive humanitarian situation burst at the seams. Acute shortages of food and water are reported and cholera is rampant. The then cycle of violence cost a staggering 150,000 lives.
Liberia's suffering has prompted some to advocate a limited police action: go in quickly, shoot the law-breakers, restore security and feed the people. These sentiments are laudable. But humanitarian interventions that have to conjure up policing are fraught with not just collateral risks for those who are engaged. They also raise serious questions vis-vis national sovereignty. The international community has yet to clearly agree on the basis and scope of humanitarian interventions.
In the interim, peacekeeping appears to be an honourable compromise and first-aid to the suffering. Peacekeepers thus continue to be the most visible demonstration of humanity's concern for fellow human beings. However, the hiatus between the expectations of the suffering and what peacekeepers can do for them remains. Peacekeepers are erroneously expected to overwhelm unruly and rogue elements, punish the guilty and protect the innocent. The problem is that this expectation, though understandable, is antithetical to peacekeeping which in essence is non-judgmental. Based on consent, impartiality and use of force only for self-defense, the peacekeepers' first lesson is not to take sides. Punitive action, however desirable, does not therefore fall strictly as yet within the realm of peacekeeping. In fact, the United Nations Charter did not foresee peacekeeping at all. Against the backdrop of two world wars, the framers of the U.N. Charter envisaged collective security to deter an aggressor akin to the perpetrators of the two world wars. Thanks to the cold war it soon became apparent that aggressions of the world war kind may not be replicated and transnational conflicts could be contained from spiraling into a global war. The cold war also kept a lid on simmering ethnic and civil discontent. Inter-state conflicts were consequently relatively straightforward for the architects of peacekeeping. Parties came under heavy pressure to relent the moment they began hostilities. Frequently this led to a ceasefire. The ceasefire needed to hold lest breaches became a reason for fresh hostilities. Against this canvass, the presence of outside non-partisan elements was conceived as a practical measure to aid in the maintenance and consolidation of the truce. As a spin-off, this presence would contribute to a climate conducive for the parties to talk out their differences in calm, and to ease the plight of innocents.
With time, however, peacekeeping has had to undergo changes. A complex world has now rendered peacekeeping multifunctional. No more is peacekeeping limited to just observing truces or ceasefires. Humanitarian assistance has increasingly become the staple of peacekeeping. Demobilization, election monitoring, reconstruction, institution building and even administering - on an interim or transitional basis - are some of the myriad tasks that have come within peacekeeping's ambit.
But nowhere down the road had the original precepts of peacekeeping changed to a policing role for peacekeepers, at least not until Rwanda and Srebrenica violently challenged the status quo. Peacekeepers should not normally distinguish between perpetrators and victims; and even if they can they may not have the means to prevent a tragedy as seen in those cases. Therefore, without the means there is no use in sending peacekeepers just to be turned into casualty statistics. Yet for those who are struck by the horrors of a war brought to their doorsteps by cable television, and for those who bear the brunt of suffering these nuances are immaterial. The very precepts of the U.N. demand that we do not simply watch, but do something.
Yet it is unclear if the international community is more willing and able since then to commit itself to preventing such wrongs. Without that resolve and concomitant, determined involvement, an over-ambitious role for lightly-armed peacekeepers might render the exercise farcical.
Q. The author of the passage would not agree with which of the following?
Directions: The passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
In science men change their opinions when new knowledge becomes available, but philosophy in the minds of many is assimilated rather to theology than to science. A theologian proclaims eternal truths; the creeds remain unchanged since the Council of Nicea. Where nobody knows anything, there is no point in changing your mind.
Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far I can remember there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect, ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some other.
If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realise that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called education. This last is peculiarly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defencelessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practised in a greater or lesser degree in the school of every civilised country.
To modern educated people, it seems obvious that matters of fact are to be ascertained by observation, not by consulting ancient authorities. But this is an entirely modern conception, which hardly existed before the seventeenth century. Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths. He said also that children would be healthier if conceived when the wind is in the north. One gathers that the two Mrs. Aristotles had to run out and look at the weathercock every evening before going to bed. He states that a man bitten by a mad dog will not go mad, but any other animal will: that the bite of the shrew mouse is dangerous to horses, especially if the mouse is pregnant; that elephants suffering from insomnia can be cured by rubbing their shoulders with salt, olive oil, and warm water; and so on and so on. Nevertheless, classical dons, who have never observed any animal except the cat and the dog, continue to praise Aristotle for his fidelity to observation.
It is not altogether true that persuasion is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion – even many of which everybody approves - are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say to them: 'Some people think the earth is round, and others think it flat; when you grow up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion. Instead of this we say; ' The earth is round.' By the time our children are old enough to examine the evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds, and the most persuasive arguments of the Flat Earth Society make no impression. The same applies to the moral precepts that we consider really important, such as 'don't pick your nose' or 'don't eat peas with a knife'. There may, for aught I know, be admirable reasons for eating peas with a knife, but the hypnotic effect of early persuasion has made me completely incapable of appreciating them.
Archimedes used mathematics to kill Romans, Galileo to improve the Grand Duke of Tuscany's artillery, modern physicists (grown more ambitious) to exterminate the human race. It is usually on this account that the study of mathematics is commended to the general public as worthy of State support.
Q. The unique feature of persuasion is that
Directions: The passage below is followed by a question based on its content. Answer the question on the basis of what is stated or implied in the passage.
A zero-ended rationalism about computers is that they only do what they are programmed to. The reasoning goes something like this: If one incorporates into a computer the capability to recognise the meaning and function of the symbols representing 'two', 'multiply' and 'equals to' then it would have no problem solving the equation : 2 x 2 =?
But how different is this really from what a child learns in grade school? It's exactly the same. There can definitely be no propensity in certain children to be better in maths than others since arithmetic even at a lowly human level is, after all, only an acquired trait and acquired traits are not inherited.
Similarly, if a computer could be made to intimately internalize the moves, strengths and positional advantages of pieces like the Queen or the Bishop, it should have no problem creaming Kasparov as it would also have the added advantage of number crunching to check out moves so many zillions of nano-seconds in advance.
However, what has been missing so far in the environment of a computer and why it required so many avatars of IBM's Deep Blue programme to outwit our number one grand-master, is the role of a family and the nurture it provides for a potential predisposition. This is because genetically, some children could have stronger musculature to become better cricketers or actors but only when given the necessary ambient training. The answer therefore lies not in suddenly blitzing a super computer's hardware memory and logic bank its equivalent of musculature with the rules, and strategy's of some table game but to bring it home as a baby.
Over the years, fostered by gentle but continuous inputs it would be able to assimilate the secret innuendoes of a game, for instance like bridge, and learn to play it with class instead of simply knowing all possible probabilities of a given hand to the n-th card-played.
Q. An example of a zero ended rationalism could be __________.
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