Comprehension

Imagine a world in which artificial intelligence is entrusted with the highest moral responsibilities: sentencing criminals, allocating medical resources, and even mediating conflicts between nations. This might seem like the pinnacle of human progress: an entity unburdened by emotion, prejudice or inconsistency, making ethical decisions with impeccable precision. . . . 
Yet beneath this vision of an idealised moral arbiter lies a fundamental question: can a machine understand morality as humans do, or is it confined to a simulacrum of ethical reasoning? AI might replicate human decisions without improving on them, carrying forward the same biases, blind spots and cultural distortions from human moral judgment. In trying to emulate us, it might only reproduce our limitations, not transcend them. But there is a deeper concern. Moral judgment draws on intuition, historical awareness and context qualities that resist formalisation. Ethics may be so embedded in lived experience that any attempt to encode it into formal structures risks flattening its most essential features. If so, AI would merely reflect human shortcomings; it would strip morality of the very depth that makes ethical reflection possible in the first place.
Still, many have tried to formalise ethics, by treating certain moral claims not as conclusions, but as starting points. A classic example comes from utilitarianism, which often takes as a foundational axiom the principle that one should act to maximise overall wellbeing. From this, more specific principles can be derived, for example, that it is right to benefit the greatest number, or that actions should be judged by their consequences for total happiness. As computational resources increase, AI becomes increasingly well-suited to the task of starting from fixed ethical assumptions and reasoning through their implications in complex situations.
But, what exactly, does it mean to formalise something like ethics? The question is easier to grasp by looking at fields in which formal systems have long played a central role. Physics, for instance, has relied on formalisation for centuries. There is no single physical theory that explains everything. Instead, we have many physical theories, each designed to describe specific aspects of the Universe: from the behaviour of quarks and electrons to the motion of galaxies. These theories often diverge. Aristotelian physics, for instance, explained falling objects in terms of natural motion toward Earth’s centre; Newtonian mechanics replaced this with a universal force of gravity. These explanations are not just different; they are incompatible. Yet both share a common structure: they begin with basic postulates assumptions about motion, force or mass– and derive increasingly complex consequences. . . .
Ethical theories have a similar structure. Like physical theories, they attempt to describe a domain– in this case, the moral landscape. They aim to answer questions about which actions are right or wrong, and why. These theories also diverge, and even when they recommend similar actions, such as giving to charity, they justify them in different ways. Ethical theories also often begin with a small set of foundational principles or claims, from which they reason about more complex moral problems.

Question: 1

All of the following can reasonably be inferred from the passage EXCEPT:

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AI's ability to formalize ethics is debated, as reducing moral reasoning to fixed points may overlook essential human qualities.
Updated On: Jul 1, 2026
  • The appeal of an AI judge rests on immunity to bribery, partiality, and fatigue; yet the text questions whether procedural cleanliness amounts to moral understanding without lived context and interpretive depth.
  • By analogy with physics, compact postulates can yield broad predictions across incompatible theories and ethics can likewise share structure while continuing to diverge rather than close on a single comprehensive framework.
  • Encoding ethics into fixed structures risks stripping away intuition, history, and context and, if that occurs, the depth that enables reflective judgment disappears. So, machines would mirror our limits rather than exceed them.
  • With fixed moral starting points and expanding computational resources, the argument forecasts convergence on one ethical system and treats contextual judgment as unnecessary once formal reasoning scales across domains and cultures.
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The Correct Option is D

Solution and Explanation

Approach (find-the-stance-violator): For an EXCEPT question, skip detailed matching and first ask: which option clashes with the author’s two firmest commitments? Whatever violates the stance is the odd one, and the rest are automatically the supported three.

Step 1 — Pin the author’s two commitments: (a) Plurality, not unity — the physics analogy insists there is “no single physical theory that explains everything,” only incompatible-but-structured theories, and ethics mirrors this divergence. (b) Context is essential — intuition, history and lived experience “resist formalisation” and encoding risks “flattening” them.

Step 2 — Scan for a violator: Option 4 asserts “convergence on one ethical system” and that “contextual judgment” becomes “unnecessary.” That breaks both commitments at once — it demands unity where the author demands plurality, and discards context the author calls indispensable. Flag it.

Step 3 — Confirm the other three respect the stance: Option 1 echoes the doubt about “procedural cleanliness” vs real moral understanding (commitment b). Option 2 restates “shared structure, continued divergence” (commitment a). Option 3 restates “flattening depth $\to$ machines mirror our limits” (commitment b). All three sit comfortably inside the author’s view.

Step 4 — Lock the answer: Since the EXCEPT is the one that cannot be inferred, and only Option 4 contradicts the passage, it is the choice.

Final answer: Option 4.
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Question: 2

Which one of the options below best summarises the passage?

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The passage focuses on the limitations of AI's formalization in ethics, stressing its risks over benefits.
Updated On: Jul 1, 2026
  • The passage highlights administrative gains from automation. It treats reproducing human moral judgment as progress and argues that, as computational resources increase, AI can be responsible for decision-making across varied institutional settings.
  • The passage weighs the appeal of an impersonal AI judge against doubts about moral grasp. It warns that codification can erode case-sensitive judgment, allow axiom-led reasoning at scale, and use a physics analogy to model structured plurality.
  • The passage weighs the appeal of an impersonal AI judge against doubts about moral grasp. It claims codified schemes retain case nuance at scale and uses a physics analogy to predict convergence on a unified framework.
  • The passage rejects formal methods in principle. It holds that moral judgment cannot be expressed in disciplined terms and concludes that AI should not serve in courts, medicine, or diplomacy under any conditions.
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The Correct Option is B

Solution and Explanation

Approach: Elimination first. In a summary question, the fastest route is to kill any option that is too extreme, too one-sided, or twists a stated fact — whatever survives is the answer.

Step 1 — Drop the one-sided option. Option 1 presents AI moral judgment purely as a gain and backs scaling it across institutions. A summary of a balanced, sceptical passage cannot be one-directional cheerleading. Eliminate.

Step 2 — Drop the extreme option. Option 4 uses absolute language — "rejects formal methods in principle," "under any conditions," "should not serve in courts, medicine, or diplomacy." CAT summaries almost never sit at such an absolute pole, and a discussion that weighs pros and cons is not a flat rejection. Eliminate.

Step 3 — Separate the near-twins. Options 2 and 3 share the same opening (appeal vs doubt) but split on two clauses. Option 3 says codified schemes retain case nuance at scale and that the physics analogy predicts convergence on a unified framework. Both are reversals of the passage's actual claims — codification loses nuance, and the physics image stands for many theories coexisting, not merging. A single distorted clause sinks the whole option.

Step 4 — Confirm the survivor. Option 2 carries the correct direction throughout: erosion of case-sensitive judgment, axiom-led reasoning at scale, and structured plurality. It is the only internally faithful choice.

Answer: Option 2.
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Question: 3

The passage compares ethics to physics, where different theories apply to different aspects of a domain and says AI can reason from fixed starting points in complex cases. Which one of the assumptions below must hold for that comparison to guide practice?

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In AI-driven decision-making, selecting the appropriate ethical framework is essential for ensuring accurate recommendations.
Updated On: Jul 1, 2026
  • Real cases never straddle different areas, so a case always fits exactly one framework without any overlap whatsoever.
  • Once formalised, all ethical frameworks yield the same recommendation in every case, so selection among them is unnecessary.
  • A single master framework replaces all others after translation into one code, so domain boundaries disappear in application.
  • There is a principled way to decide which ethical framework applies to which class of cases, so the system can select the relevant starting points before deriving a recommendation.
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The Correct Option is D

Solution and Explanation

Approach: Use the "negation test" — the true assumption is the one whose negation breaks the argument. Negate each option; whichever makes the physics-to-ethics comparison collapse is the assumption.

Step 1 — Negate Option 4. Suppose there is no principled way to decide which framework applies to which case. Then the AI cannot choose its fixed starting points, and "reasoning from fixed starting points in complex cases" never gets off the ground. The argument dies — so this is a genuine, load-bearing assumption.

Step 2 — Negate the others and watch them survive. Negate Option 1 (cases do straddle areas): the argument still works, because a principled selection rule could still assign a primary framework. Negate Option 2 (frameworks give different recommendations): fine — that is exactly why selection matters; the argument is unharmed, in fact strengthened. Negate Option 3 (no single master framework): the analogy actually prefers multiple frameworks, so removing the master framework leaves the argument intact. None of these negations break anything, so none is the required assumption.

Step 3 — Cross-check the extremes. Options 1, 2 and 3 each over-claim — "never," "all... same recommendation," "single master framework replaces all." Necessary assumptions are usually modest; the modest, indispensable claim is Option 4.

Answer: Option 4.
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Question: 4

Choose the one option below that comes closest to being the opposite of “utilitarianism”.

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Utilitarianism focuses on maximizing total welfare, while priorititarianism emphasizes benefiting the worst-off.
Updated On: Jul 1, 2026
  • The committee adopted a non-egoist framework, ranking policies by their contribution to overall social welfare and treating self-interest as a derivative concern within institutional evaluation.
  • The council followed a priorititarian approach, assigning greater moral weight to improvements for the worst-off rather than to maximising total welfare across the affected population.
  • The authors advocated an absolutist stance, following exceptionless rules regardless of outcomes and evaluating choices by broadest societal benefit.
  • The policy was cast as deontological ethics, selecting the option that delivered the highest total benefit to citizens while presenting duty as a secondary consideration in public decision-making.
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The Correct Option is B

Solution and Explanation

Approach: Trap-spotting. The question writer has scrambled the labels and the definitions on purpose. Read past the label, test each definition against the one-line rule "utilitarianism = maximise the total, outcomes only," and reject any option whose definition leans back toward that rule.

Step 1 — Flag the mislabels. Option 3 calls itself "absolutist" but then evaluates by "broadest societal benefit"; Option 4 calls itself "deontological" but then chases "the highest total benefit." Both definitions secretly endorse outcome-maximising, so neither can be the opposite of utilitarianism — they are decoys built to catch students who match on the label.

Step 2 — Clear the look-alike. Option 1 ranks policies by "overall social welfare" — that is the utilitarian move (maximise aggregate good). Same side of the fence, eliminate.

Step 3 — What's left must oppose the total. Option 2's definition — give extra weight to the worst-off instead of maximising total welfare — is the only one that rejects pure aggregation and brings in distribution/fairness. That is the genuine antithesis of "sum it up and maximise."

Answer: Option 2.
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