Philosophy of Mind

Some of the prime infirmities that the passage seems to suffer from are because

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

A philosopher once remarked that the difference between a bee and an architect is that the architect, unlike the bee, erects a structure in the mind before translating it into reality. Human civilization has taken considerable time to attain the stage of the architect. However, having got there, the contours of human evolution are determined by a continuous clash of ideas in all spheres of endeavor. The philosophical divide between materialism and idealism is often erroneously portrayed as matter versus mind. It is, in fact, a battle between the mind or consciousness as the highest form of matter and consciousness independent of the human body and, in that sense, cosmic in nature. While advances in modern science from astrophysics micro-genetic engineering reconfirm the former, the battle between sects of ideas, or ideology, continues to shape advances in every field. The answer to Descarte’s famous postulate ‘I think, therefore, I am’ is ‘I am, therefore, I think’.      
Ideology represents the structure of ideas that seeks to influence the course of human development. It not merely remains relevant, but also becomes pivotal in shaping the future. Presuming that the goal of humanity is to seek emancipation from all forms of bondage, the realization of that quest lies in Marxism.
Marxism is unique in that it can be transcended only when its agenda is realized. This is because its understanding of capitalism is by itself thorough enough for it to comprehend the historical possibilities that lie beyond it. Hence Marxism will be rendered superfluous only when capitalism, the object of its analysis, is itself superseded.
Put another way, the uniqueness of Marxism lies in the fact that all so-called theoretical advances, which supposedly render it obsolete, actually represent throwbacks to still earlier theories superseded by it. Alternatively, these are exaggerations of some particular aspects inherent in Marxism, but dressed in a new garb. These should properly be assimilated within Marxism. ‘Post-modernist’ or ‘post-Marxist’ theories which, at their best, emphasize a moral–ethical stance on social issues, represent pre-Marxist notions of social reformism, egalitarianism or progressive interventionism. On the other hand, certain reformist theories like Keynesianism, based on insights into the functioning of the capitalist economy, unknowingly recall insights actually contained in though not adequately developed within Marxism. It is not surprising that the Polish economist Michael Kalecki, by training an engineer whose only introduction to economics was Marx’s Capital, independently arrived at the so-called Keynesian Revolution.
Marx was not unique on account of subjective qualities that made him superior to other thinkers. What was remarkable was his approach to the analysis of capitalism and the unearthing of certain tendencies that he said were ‘immanent’ in capitalist social relations. The capitalist systems function in a manner that is not merely independent of the will and consciousness of its participants. Indeed, it makes the participants, whether capitalists or workers, victims of ‘alienation’ and mere personifications of the elements through which its inherent logic works itself out.

Even a cursory glance through the passage shows that some of the assumptions made by the author are appalling. What appears to be the most appalling of them all?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

A philosopher once remarked that the difference between a bee and an architect is that the architect, unlike the bee, erects a structure in the mind before translating it into reality. Human civilization has taken considerable time to attain the stage of the architect. However, having got there, the contours of human evolution are determined by a continuous clash of ideas in all spheres of endeavor. The philosophical divide between materialism and idealism is often erroneously portrayed as matter versus mind. It is, in fact, a battle between the mind or consciousness as the highest form of matter and consciousness independent of the human body and, in that sense, cosmic in nature. While advances in modern science from astrophysics micro-genetic engineering reconfirm the former, the battle between sects of ideas, or ideology, continues to shape advances in every field. The answer to Descarte’s famous postulate ‘I think, therefore, I am’ is ‘I am, therefore, I think’.      
Ideology represents the structure of ideas that seeks to influence the course of human development. It not merely remains relevant, but also becomes pivotal in shaping the future. Presuming that the goal of humanity is to seek emancipation from all forms of bondage, the realization of that quest lies in Marxism.
Marxism is unique in that it can be transcended only when its agenda is realized. This is because its understanding of capitalism is by itself thorough enough for it to comprehend the historical possibilities that lie beyond it. Hence Marxism will be rendered superfluous only when capitalism, the object of its analysis, is itself superseded.
Put another way, the uniqueness of Marxism lies in the fact that all so-called theoretical advances, which supposedly render it obsolete, actually represent throwbacks to still earlier theories superseded by it. Alternatively, these are exaggerations of some particular aspects inherent in Marxism, but dressed in a new garb. These should properly be assimilated within Marxism. ‘Post-modernist’ or ‘post-Marxist’ theories which, at their best, emphasize a moral–ethical stance on social issues, represent pre-Marxist notions of social reformism, egalitarianism or progressive interventionism. On the other hand, certain reformist theories like Keynesianism, based on insights into the functioning of the capitalist economy, unknowingly recall insights actually contained in though not adequately developed within Marxism. It is not surprising that the Polish economist Michael Kalecki, by training an engineer whose only introduction to economics was Marx’s Capital, independently arrived at the so-called Keynesian Revolution.
Marx was not unique on account of subjective qualities that made him superior to other thinkers. What was remarkable was his approach to the analysis of capitalism and the unearthing of certain tendencies that he said were ‘immanent’ in capitalist social relations. The capitalist systems function in a manner that is not merely independent of the will and consciousness of its participants. Indeed, it makes the participants, whether capitalists or workers, victims of ‘alienation’ and mere personifications of the elements through which its inherent logic works itself out.

What, according to the passage, is the principal difference between reason and imagination?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

According to one mode of regarding those two classes of mental action, which are called reason and imagination, the former may be considered as mind contemplating the relations borne by one thought to another, however produced; and the latter, as mind acting upon those thoughts so as to colour them with its own light, and composing from them, as from elements, other thoughts, each containing within itself the principle of its own integrity.  The one is the principle of synthesis, and has for its objects those forms which are common to universal nature and existence itself; the other is the principle of analysis, and its action regards the relations of things, simply as relations; considering thoughts, not in their integral unity, but as the algebraical representations which conduct to certain general results. Reason is the enumeration of quantities already known; imagination is the perception of the value of those quantities, both separately and as a whole. Reason respects the differences and imagination the similitudes of things. Reason is to imagination as the instrument to the agent, as the body to the spirit, as the shadow to the substance.
Poetry, in a general sense, may be defined to be ‘the expression of the imagination’: and poetry is connate with the origin of man. Man is an instrument over which a series of external and internal impressions are driven, like the alternations of an ever-changing wind over an Aeolian lyre, which move it by their motion to ever-changing melody. But there is a principle within the human being, and perhaps within all sentient beings, which acts otherwise than in the lyre, and produces not melody alone, but harmony, by an internal adjustment of the sounds of motions thus excited to the impressions which excite them. It is as if the lyre could accommodate its chords to the motions of that which strikes them, in a determined proportion of sound; even as the musician can accommodate his voice to the sound of the lyre. A child at play by itself will express its delight by its voice and motions; and every inflexion of tone and every gesture will bear exact relation to a corresponding antitype in the pleasurable impressions which awakened it; it will be the reflected image of that impression; and as the lyre trembles and sounds after the wind has died away, so the child seeks, by prolonging in its voice and motions the duration of the effect, to prolong also a consciousness of the cause. In relation to the objects that delight a child, these expressions are what poetry is to higher objects. The savage (for the savage is to ages what the child is to years) expresses the emotions produced in him by surrounding objects in a similar manner; and language and gesture, together with plastic or pictorial imitation, become the image of the combined effect of those objects, and of his apprehension of them. Man in society, with all his passions and his pleasures, next becomes the object of the passions and pleasures of man; an additional class of emotions produces an augmented treasure of expressions; and language, gesture, and the imitative arts, become at once the representation and the medium, the pencil and the picture, the chisel and the statue, the chord and the harmony. The social sympathies, or those laws from which, as from its elements, society results, begin to develop themselves from the moment that two human beings coexist; the future is contained within the present, as the plant within the seed; and equality, diversity, unity, contrasts, mutual dependence, become the principles alone capable of affording the motives according to which the will of a social being is determined to action, inasmuch as he is social; and constitute pleasure in sensation, virtue in sentiment, beauty in art, truth in reasoning, and love in the intercourse of the kind. Hence, men even in the infancy of society observe a certain order in their words and actions, distinct from that of the objects and the impressions represented by them, all expression being subject to the laws of that from which it proceeds.