Comprehension:
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the
best answer for each question.
Steven Pinker’s new book, “Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters,”
offers a pragmatic dose of measured optimism, presenting rationality as a fragile but
achievable ideal in personal and civic life. . . . Pinker’s ambition to illuminate such a crucial
topic offers the welcome prospect of a return to sanity. . . . It’s no small achievement to make
formal logic, game theory, statistics and Bayesian reasoning delightful topics full of charm and
relevance.
It’s also plausible to believe that a wider application of the rational tools he analyzes would
improve the world in important ways. His primer on statistics and scientific uncertainty is
particularly timely and should be required reading before consuming any news about the
[COVID] pandemic. More broadly, he argues that less media coverage of shocking but
vanishingly rare events, from shark attacks to adverse vaccine reactions, would help prevent
dangerous overreactions, fatalism and the diversion of finite resources away from solvable
but less-dramatic issues, like malnutrition in the developing world.
It’s a reasonable critique, and Pinker is not the first to make it. But analyzing the political
economy of journalism — its funding structures, ownership concentration and increasing
reliance on social media shares — would have given a fuller picture of why so much coverage
is so misguided and what we might do about it.
Pinker’s main focus is the sort of conscious, sequential reasoning that can track the steps in a
geometric proof or an argument in formal logic. Skill in this domain maps directly onto the
navigation of many real-world problems, and Pinker shows how greater mastery of the tools
of rationality can improve decision-making in medical, legal, financial and many other
contexts in which we must act on uncertain and shifting information. . . .
Despite the undeniable power of the sort of rationality he describes, many of the deepest
insights in the history of science, math, music and art strike their originators in moments of
epiphany. From the 19th-century chemist Friedrich August Kekulé’s discovery of the structure
of benzene to any of Mozart’s symphonies, much extraordinary human achievement is not a
product of conscious, sequential reasoning. Even Plato’s Socrates — who anticipated many
of Pinker’s points by nearly 2,500 years, showing the virtue of knowing what you do not know
and examining all premises in arguments, not simply trusting speakers’ authority or charisma
— attributed many of his most profound insights to dreams and visions. Conscious reasoning
is helpful in sorting the wheat from the chaff, but it would be interesting to consider the hidden
aquifers that make much of the grain grow in the first place.
The role of moral and ethical education in promoting rational behavior is also underexplored.
Pinker recognizes that rationality “is not just a cognitive virtue but a moral one.” But this
profoundly important point, one subtly explored by ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and
Aristotle, doesn’t really get developed. This is a shame, since possessing the right sort of
moral character is arguably a precondition for using rationality in beneficial ways.

SubQuestion No : 9
Q.9 The author refers to the ancient Greek philosophers to:
Ans 1. highlight the influence of their thinking on the development of Pinker’s arguments.

2. show how dreams and visions have for centuries influenced subconscious behaviour
   and pathbreaking inventions.
3. indicate the various similarities between their thinking and Pinker’s conclusions.
4. reveal gaps in Pinker’s discussion of the importance of ethical considerations in
   rational behaviour.

Details

4

SubQuestion No : 10
Q.10 According to the author, for Pinker as well as the ancient Greek philosophers, rational
thinking involves all of the following EXCEPT:
Ans 1. an awareness of underlying assumptions in an argument and gaps in one’s own
knowledge.

2. arriving at independent conclusions irrespective of who is presenting the argument.
3. the primacy of conscious sequential reasoning as the basis for seminal human
   achievements.
4. the belief that the ability to reason logically encompasses an ethical and moral
   dimension

3Details

3

SubQuestion No : 11
Q.11 The author mentions Kekulé’s discovery of the structure of benzene and Mozart’s
symphonies to illustrate the point that:
Ans 1.
Pinker’s conclusions on sequential reasoning are belied by European achievements which, in
the past, were more rooted in unconscious bursts of genius.
2.
great innovations across various fields can stem from flashes of intuition and are not always
propelled by logical thinking.
3.
unlike the sciences, human achievements in other fields are a mix of logical reasoning and
spontaneous epiphanies.
4.
it is not just the creative arts, but also scientific fields that have benefitted from flashes of
creativity

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3

SubQuestion No : 12
Q.12 The author endorses Pinker’s views on the importance of logical reasoning as it:
Ans 1. equips people with the ability to tackle challenging practical problems.

2. provides a moral compass for resolving important ethical dilemmas.
3. helps people to gain expertise in statistics and other scientific disciplines.
4. focuses public attention on real issues like development rather than sensational
   events.

Details

1