One can barely make a move within the oldest academic discipline without understanding its past. People who don’t know its vast literature feel excluded from the import of any particular philosopher or problem. That kind of exclusion can be remedied by doing the requisite study -by catching up, so to speak, on a body of knowledge. But philosophy is more than just a body of knowledge; it is an ability to examine the structures of thought itself. Simon Blackburn calls that“conceptual engineering’, in order to distinguish it from regular empirical investigation.___________________

The requirement makes philosophy highly challenging for the academicians.

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The requirement makes philosophy one of the most popular disciplines among students of humanities.

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The requirement makes philosophy unpopular in the same sense that higher mathematics is unpopular

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The requirement makes philosophy completely different from popular culture that tends towards the communal.

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Either [a] or [c].

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Solution

The correct option is C The requirement makes philosophy unpopular in the same sense that higher mathematics is unpopular
Option (c)

The passage focuses on the problems that a general student of philosophy faces. It does not relate to the perceptions of only the academicians, hence [a] can be negated. The passage is not overly positive about the study of philosophy; rather the focus is more on the impediments in the understanding of philosophy. Therefore, a positive option like[b] cannot fit in. The passage does not at all relate to popular culture, so we cannot infer [d]. [c] follows from the passage and sums up the idea why philosophy is unpopular. The distinction between philosophy and other empirical studies, as mentioned in the last sentence, is carried forward in [c] by comparing philosophy with higher mathematics. So, only [c] aptly completes the theme in the passage.

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Similar questions

For the following question, arrange the sentences A, B, C, and D between sentences 1 and 6 to form a logical sequence with sentence 1 and sentence 6 as the starting sentence and the concluding sentence respectively:

(1) Philosophy, outside of the formal academic environment, can be considered a discipline, not a profession.
(A) On the other hand, engineering, no matter the specialty, is firmly set in the ways of a profession, from the highly structured undergraduate training to the lifetime of professional requirements.
(B) Although philosophy represents a body of knowledge, it does not beget an occupation built on that specialized body of knowledge.
(C) This status does not devalue the discipline of philosophy, but rather permeates society with people grounded in the discipline's fundamentals.
(D) Philosophy degree holders move on to a myriad of job opportunities from law to business, from writing to political office, but there are no job openings on Monster.com for 'Philosopher.'
(6) The geosciences are potentially at a crossroads - the field can either continue to be a profession or slowly evolve into a discipline.

Q. Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive (A) / incurious (B) to many things of very great importance. Theology, on the other hand, induces a dogmatic belief that we have knowledge where in fact we have ignorance, and by doing so generates a kind of precarious (A) / impertinent (B) insolence towards the universe. Uncertainty, in the presence of vivid hopes and fears, is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales. It is not good either to forget the questions that philosophy asks, or to persuade ourselves that we have found factual (A) / indubitable (B) answers to them. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralysed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.___

Read the following passage and answer the (four) items that follow:

A few weeks ago, a newspaper article quoted a well-known scientist saying, "IT has destroyed Indian science?' One can speculate about the various ways in which the growth of the IT sector and other similar knowledge industries such as biotechnology has lead to a decline in basic scientific research in India.

The most obvious reason is money; pay scales in IT and BT are much higher than one can aspire to in academia. The argument goes: why should a bright B.Tech. or M.Sc. student enroll in a PhD program when he/she can make a lot more money writing code? Not only does a fresh IT employee make a lot more than a fresh M.Tech student, his/her pay will rise much faster in IT than in academia. A professor's pay at a government-run university, even after the sixth pay commission, tops out at far less than a senior executive's salary in a major industry.

Second, the social status of IT and BT jobs equal or even exceed the social status of corresponding academic positions, since they are seen as knowledge industries, which plays to the best and worst instincts of the societal order. As quintessential white collar profession, neither do they compel a successful entrepreneur to resort to violence and corruption, nor do they demand any physical labor. Unlike real-estate or road construction, it is felt that IT, workers can become rich while staying honest and sweat free. Assuming that the labor pool for academia and IT is roughly the same, difference in our collective preferences biases the labor market toward IT and away from academia. Further, when the imbalance between IT and academia continues for years and even decades, a destructive loop, from academia's point of view, is created. When our best and brightest take IT jobs over academic ones for a decade or more, faculty positions in our universities and research centers are no longer filled by the best candidates. As faculty quality goes down, so does the capacity to train top-class graduate students who, after all, are teachers in training. In response to decreasing faculty quality, even those students who are foreign trained graduates prefer to come back to corporate India, if at all they do come back, and the downward cycle replicates itself in each generation. In other words, academia is trapped within a perfect storm created by a combination of social and economic factors.

In this socio-economic calculus, the members of our societal classes should prefer an IT job to an academic one. Or, to put it another way, the knowledge economy, i.e., the creation of knowledge for profit, trumps the knowledge society, i.e., the creation of knowledge of its own sake or the sake of the greater good. As is said, "knowledge is power, but money is even more power?' Perhaps the scientist was alluding to this victory of capitalism over the pursuit of pure knowledge when he accused IT of having a negative influence of Indian science.

Surely, knowledge has become a commodity like any other and as a result, knowledge workers are like any other laborers, who will sell their' wares to the highest bidder. One solution is to accept and even encourage the commoditization of knowledge; if so, Indian universities and research centers should copy their western counterparts by becoming more and more like corporations. These centers of learning should convert themselves into engines of growth. In this logic, if we increase academic salaries and research grants to match IT pay cheques we will attract good people into academia, where, in any case, it is rumored that a certain elusive feeling called "the quality of life" is better.

Q7. Why does the author think that knowledge has become a commodity?

Q. Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of reflections (A)/speculations (B) on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable(A)/unattainable(B); but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of proclamation(A) / revelation(B). All definite knowledge – so I should contend – belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy.___

Q. Why does the author think that knowledge has become a commodity?

Read the following passage and answer the (four) items that follow:
A few weeks ago, a newspaper article quoted a well-known scientist saying, "IT has destroyed Indian science?' One can speculate about the various ways in which the growth of the IT sector and other similar knowledge industries such as biotechnology has lead to a decline in basic scientific research in India.
The most obvious reason is money; pay scales in IT and BT are much higher than one can aspire to in academia. The argument goes: why should a bright B.Tech. or M.Sc. student enroll in a PhD program when he/she can make a lot more money writing code? Not only does a fresh IT employee make a lot more than a fresh M.Tech student, his/her pay will rise much faster in IT than in academia. A professor's pay at a government-run university, even after the sixth pay commission, tops out at far less than a senior executive's salary in a major industry.
Second, the social status of IT and BT jobs equal or even exceed the social status of corresponding academic positions, since they are seen as knowledge industries, which plays to the best and worst instincts of the societal order. As quintessential white collar profession, neither do they compel a successful entrepreneur to resort to violence and corruption, nor do they demand any physical labor. Unlike real-estate or road construction, it is felt that IT, workers can become rich while staying honest and sweat free. Assuming that the labor pool for academia and IT is roughly the same, difference in our collective preferences biases the labor market toward IT and away from academia. Further, when the imbalance between IT and academia continues for years and even decades, a destructive loop, from academia's point of view, is created. When our best and brightest take IT jobs over academic ones for a decade or more, faculty positions in our universities and research centers are no longer filled by the best candidates. As faculty quality goes down, so does the capacity to train top-class graduate students who, after all, are teachers in training. In response to decreasing faculty quality, even those students who are foreign trained graduates prefer to come back to corporate India, if at all they do come back, and the downward cycle replicates itself in each generation. In other words, academia is trapped within a perfect storm created by a combination of social and economic factors.
In this socio-economic calculus, the members of our societal classes should prefer an IT job to an academic one. Or, to put it another way, the knowledge economy, i.e., the creation of knowledge for profit, trumps the knowledge society, i.e., the creation of knowledge of its own sake or the sake of the greater good. As is said, "knowledge is power, but money is even more power?' Perhaps the scientist was alluding to this victory of capitalism over the pursuit of pure knowledge when he accused IT of having a negative influence of Indian science.
Surely, knowledge has become a commodity like any other and as a result, knowledge workers are like any other laborers, who will sell their' wares to the highest bidder. One solution is to accept and even encourage the commoditization of knowledge; if so, Indian universities and research centers should copy their western counterparts by becoming more and more like corporations. These centers of learning should convert themselves into engines of growth. In this logic, if we increase academic salaries and research grants to match IT pay cheques we will attract good people into academia, where, in any case, it is rumored that a certain elusive feeling called "the quality of life" is better.

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