Question Details

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 Kekulés 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.



The author refers to the ancient Greek philosophers to:

Options

A

highlight the influence of their thinking on the development of Pinker's arguments.

B

show how dreams and visions have for centuries influenced subconscious behaviour and pathbreaking inventions.

C

reveal gaps in Pinker's discussion of the importance of ethical considerations in rational behaviour.

D

indicate the various similarities between their thinking and Pinker's conclusions.

Show Answer

Correct Answer :

Option C

reveal gaps in Pinker's discussion of the importance of ethical considerations in rational behaviour.

Solution :

The correct option is reveal gaps in Pinker's discussion of the importance of ethical considerations in rational behaviour.

Step-by-step Explanation:

1. Locate the Reference in the Passage:
The reference to ancient Greek philosophers occurs in the final paragraph of the passage:
"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..."

2. Analyze the Author's Purpose:
The author points out that the connection between rationality and moral/ethical education is "underexplored" in Pinker's book and "doesn't really get developed." By bringing up Plato and Aristotle as thinkers who did subtly explore this point, the author highlights a significant omission or "gap" in Pinker's current discussion on how moral character is a precondition for using rationality beneficially.

3. Evaluate the Options:
• The mention of these philosophers is not to show their influence on Pinker (since Pinker fails to develop the point), nor is it merely to show similarities or discuss dreams/visions (which refers to Socrates in a different context in the fifth paragraph).
• Instead, it directly serves to show that Pinker's work lacks a deeper development of ethical considerations in rational behavior, which these ancient philosophers had previously examined. This aligns perfectly with the option: "reveal gaps in Pinker's discussion of the importance of ethical considerations in rational behaviour."

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