XAT 2020 Question Paper | Verbal Ability and Logical Reasoning

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Comprehension: Read the passage below and answer the 3 associated questions:
The nature of knowledge cannot survive unchanged within this context of general transformation. It can fit into the new channels, and become operational, only if learning is translated into quantities of information. We can predict that anything in the constituted body of knowledge that is not translatable in this way will be abandoned and that the direction of new research will be dictated by the possibility of its eventual results being translatable into computer language. The “producers” and users of knowledge must know, and will have to, possess the means of translating into these languages whatever they want to invent or learn. Research on translating machines is already well advanced. Along with the hegemony of computers comes a certain logic, and therefore a certain set of prescriptions determining which statements are accepted as “knowledge” statements. We may thus expect a thorough exteriorisation of knowledge with respect to the “knower,” at whatever point he or she may occupy in the knowledge process. The old principle that the acquisition of knowledge is indissociable from the training (Bildung) of minds, or even of individuals, is becoming obsolete and will become ever more so. The relationships of the suppliers and users of knowledge to the knowledge they supply and use is now tending, and will increasingly tend, to assume the form already taken by the relationship of commodity producers and consumers to the commodities they produce and consume – that is, the form of value. Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, it is and will be consumed in order to be valorised in a new production: in both cases, the goal is exchange. Knowledge ceases to be an end in itself, it loses its “use-value.”

Question 25 : Based on the passage, which of the following statements can be BEST inferred?

1. Knowledge as a transactional commodity is indispensable to productive power.
2. Mental discipline is not necessary for learning anymore.
3. The locus of creation and accumulation of knowledge has shifted.
4. Acquisition of knowledge need no longer transform its recipient.
5. For knowledge to acquire an exchange-value, it should cease to have a use-value.

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Explanatory Answer

A. Knowledge as a transactional commodity is indispensable to productive power. – the passage talks about exteriorization of knowledge which seems to state that knowledge as a commodity is dispensable to productive power once exteriorized. Hence this option can be ignored.
B. Mental discipline is not necessary for learning anymore. – The passage only states that raining of minds is “becoming obsolete”; it does not conclude that mental discipline is not necessary at all. Though this seems to be a close call, this option can be eliminated.
C. The locus of creation and accumulation of knowledge has shifted. – The locus has not shifted; it is just evaluated based on the “use value”. The end goal is still exchange of knowledge. So this option can be eliminated.
D. Acquisition of knowledge need no longer transform its recipient. – The following statement supports this option: “Knowledge is produced in order to be sold, and is consumed in order to be valorized in a new production.” This clearly indicates that it becomes a continuum and the recipient need not necessarily be transformed. Hence, this is the right answer choice.
E. For knowledge to acquire an exchange-value, it should cease to have a use-value. – Knowledge need not necessarily lose it use-value to acquire an exchance-value; that is not what the passage conveys. So this can be eliminated.

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The question is "Based on the passage, which of the following statements can be BEST inferred?"

Hence, the answer is Acquisition of knowledge need no longer transform its recipient.

Choice D is the correct answer.