Section B
Directions: In this section, you will hear 3 short passages. At the end of each passage, you will hear some questions. Both the passage and the questions will be spoken only once. After you hear a question, you must choose the best answer from the four choices marked A, B, C and D.
听力原文: It is curious how often sympathy for the old and infirm takes a form. which actually humiliates them. Their friends, or mere acquaintances, wishing to show good will, paw them, sometimes leaning forward to rearrange their neckwear, pulling at their shawl, touching their hair or patting their faces—things they would never presume to do, unasked, to one of their contemporaries.
An equally humiliating habit of many people who are quite unconscious of being rude is to talk about old people in front of them, as if they were not there, discussing their health, or making playful remarks, on the lines of “Well, nurse, has she been a good girl today?”
It is now universally accepted that children should be encouraged to do as much as they can for themselves in order to develop their brains and muscles, but so few people today seem to have time to allow the elderly the same means of keeping their minds and muscles active. With what they believe to be unselfish kindness they perform. innumerable services for them that they would be much better left to do, even with a struggle, for themselves.
Convenient flats, well-run homes, “motherly” visitors, or organized entertainments cannot make up for the fundamental need which must be satisfied—the need to retain to the end of life, human dignity and respect of 35 one’s fellows.
(27)
A.Talking casually about the old in front of them as if they were absent.
B.Patting old people in their faces.
C.Rearranging the neckwear for the old.
D.Pulling at old people's shawls.
I believe in people, in sheer, unadulterated humanity. I believe in listening to what people have to say, in helping them to achieve the things which they want and the things which they need. Naturally, there are people who behave like beasts, who kill, who cheat, who lie and who destroy. But without a belief in man and a faith in his possibilities for the future, there can be no hope for the future, but only bitterness that the past has gone. I believe we must, each of us, make a philosophy by which we can live. There are people who make a philosophy out of believing in nothing. They say there is no truth, that goodness is simply cleverness in disguising your own selfishness. They say that life is simply the short gap in between an unpleasant birth and an inevitable death. There are others who say that man is born into evil and sinfulness and that life is a process of purification through suffering and that death is the reward for having suffered.
I believe these philosophies are false. The most important thing in life is the way it is lived, and there is no such thing as an abstract happiness, an abstract goodness or morality, or an abstract anything, except in terms of the person who believes and who acts. There is only the single human being who lives and who, through every moment of his own personal living experience, is being happy or unhappy, noble or base, wise or unwise, or simply existing.
The question is: How can these individual moments of human experience be filled with the richness of a philosophy which can sustain the individual in his own life? Unless we give part of ourselves away, unless we can live with other people and understand them and help them, we are missing the most essential part of our own human lives.
There are as many roads to the attainment of wisdom and goodness as there are people who undertake to walk them. There are as many solid truths on which we can stand as there are people who can search them out and who will stand on them. There are as many ideas and ideals as there are men of good will who will hold them in their minds and act them in their lives.
A. listening to people's opinions
B. revolutionary changes
C. being happy or unhappy
D. the way it is lived
E. we give part of ourselves away
F. many roads to the attainment of wisdom
G. as a short gap between birth and death
We are living in a periods of
The author aims to tell us that_________.
A. women's minds perform. better than men's
B. men's minds decline more with age
C. everyone becomes a little more forgetful as they get older
D. a survey on human's mind decline was done recently
A.classic
B.chic
C.classical
D.clarified
Part B (10 points)
You are going to read a text about relations between machine and human, followed by a list of examples. Choose the best example from the list A—F for each numbered paragraph (41—45). There is one extra example which you do not need to use.
Will humans always be superior to machines?
This statement actually consists of a series of three related claims (1) machines are tools of human minds; (2) human minds will always be superior to machines; and (3) it is because machines are human tools that human minds will always be superior to machines. While I concede the first claim, whether I agree with the other two claims depends partly on how one defines "superiority", and partly on how willing one is to humble oneself to the unknown future scenarios.
(41) After all, would any machine even exist unless a human being invented it? Of course not. Moreover, I would be hard-pressed to think of any machine that cannot be described as a tool. Even machines designed to entertain or amuse us—for example, toy robots, cars and video games, and novelty items—are in fact tools, which their inventors and promoters use for engaging in commerce and the business of entertainment and amusement.
(42) And, the claim that a machine can be an end in itself, without purpose or utilitarian function for humans whatsoever, is dubious at best, since I cannot conjure up even a single example of any such machine.
(43) As for the statement's second claim, in certain respects machines are superior. We have devised machines that perform. number-crunching and other rote cerebral tasks with greater accuracy and speed than human minds ever could. However, if one defines superiority not in terms of competence in performing rote tasks but rather in other ways, human minds are superior. Machines have no capacity for independent thought, for making judgments based on normative considerations, or for developing emotional responses to intellectual problems.
(44) Up until now, the notion of human-made machines that develop the ability to think on their own, and to develop so-called "emotional intelligence", has been pure fiction. Besides, even in fiction we humans ultimately prevail over such machines—as in the cases of Frankenstein's monster and Hat, the computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Yet it seems presumptuous to assert with confidence that humans will always maintain their superior status over their machines. In other words, machines will soon exhibit the traits to which we humans attribute our own superiority.
(45) And insofar as humans have the unique capacity for independent thought, subjective judgment, and emotional response, it also seems fair to claim superiority over our machines. Besides, should we ever become so clever a species as to devise machines that can truly think for themselves and look out for their own well-being, then query whether these machines of the future would be "machines" anymore.
A. Recent advances in biotechnology, particularly in the area of human genome research, suggest that within the twenty-first century we'll witness machines that can learn to think on their own, to repair and nurture themselves, to experience Visceral sensations, and so forth.
B. The statement is clearly accurate insofar as machines are tools of human minds.
C. In sum, because we devise machines in order that they may serve us, it is fair to characterize machines as "tools of human minds".
D. It's hardly surprising that human-made machine can do the most works that belong to human before.
E. In fact, it is because we can devise machines that are superior in these respects that we devise them—as our tools—to begin with.
F. When we develop any sort of machine we always have some sort of end in mind—a purpose for that machine.
The first paragraph mainly discusses______.
A.the features of the computer age
B.the phenomenon of quantification
C.the mutual influence between computers and human
D.the change in the working modes of human minds
A、For Chomsky
B、In Chomsky’s opinion
C、In Chomsky’s view
D、Chomsky believed
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