MCAT CARS Section Practice Questions

B is correct. The passage opens on the doubt that philosophy is “useless trifling,” and paragraph 3 concedes that a candid philosopher must admit his study “has not achieved positive results such as have been achieved by other sciences.” The author then places philosophy’s value in its effects on the lives of those who study it (paragraph 2) and in keeping “that speculative interest in the universe” alive (paragraph 4). Each paragraph serves that one purpose.

A. Paragraph 4 says some of philosophy’s questions “must remain insoluble to the human intellect unless its powers become of quite a different order from what they are now.” The author expects no answers to them, so this reads a hope into the passage that he rules out.

C. The author contrasts how the two do good. Science helps “innumerable people who are wholly ignorant of it,” and philosophy works through the people who study it. He never ranks one above the other, so this takes a contrast for a verdict.

D. This is the opposite of paragraph 3, where a philosopher asked for his field’s definite truths “will, if he is candid, have to confess that his study has not achieved positive results.”

D is correct. The Newton example follows the claim that “as soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible, this subject ceases to be called philosophy, and becomes a separate science.” His title shows that the study of the heavens was once “included in philosophy” before it became astronomy, so it illustrates that move.

A. Astronomy and psychology appear as two parallel cases of the same move, one after the other, and the author never compares how well they did. This reads a ranking into a pair of examples.

B. Nothing in the passage judges scientists as philosophers. Newton’s name matters only because the title of his book still calls physics “natural philosophy,” a trace of where the subject used to sit.

C. This is the closest trap. The results didn’t disappear. Astronomy kept everything it had learned and moved under a new name, so the passage describes a subject being relabeled, and philosophy’s record looks thinner only because the name went with it.

A is correct. Paragraph 3 says a subject leaves philosophy “as soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible,” which is why “the uncertainty of philosophy is more apparent than real.” Linguistics leaving once its theories can be tested repeats the astronomy and psychology cases, and each move like it takes a success off philosophy’s record and gives it to a science.

B. The move happens because progress was made. In the author’s account, a question leaves philosophy once it can be answered, so the departure is a sign of success that happens to be credited to the new science.

C. The author treats the departure of answerable questions as normal, and he places philosophy’s value in the questions that remain open. Nothing in the passage suggests he would mourn a subject that found its answers.

D. The passage says the study of the heavens “was once included in philosophy” and that the study of the mind “was a part of philosophy.” A subject belongs to philosophy until it becomes answerable, so the author would say the questions were philosophical while they stayed open.

C is correct. Paragraph 4 says these questions “must remain insoluble to the human intellect unless its powers become of quite a different order,” and also that it is “part of the business of philosophy to continue the consideration of such questions.” Choice C holds both halves of that view.

A. The passage puts the limit in the human intellect itself, which would need powers “of quite a different order from what they are now.” Better instruments would leave that limit where it is.

B. Calling them idle repeats the doubters’ charge in paragraph 1 that philosophy is “useless trifling,” which the author argues against. He calls these questions “of the profoundest interest to our spiritual life.”

D. The author calls the consideration of these questions “the business of philosophy.” Religion doesn’t appear in the passage, so nothing hands these questions to it.

A is correct. Paragraph 3 backs this with two named cases. The study of the heavens “was once included in philosophy” and now belongs to astronomy, with Newton’s title as a trace of the old name, and the study of the human mind has become psychology. No other claim in the passage gets concrete examples.

B. The author asserts this in the last sentence and moves on. No example or argument backs it, so it’s one of the least supported claims in the passage.

C. The author states this as a contrast with philosophy and names the route (“through the medium of inventions”) but gives no case of it. It’s a premise he expects the reader to grant.

D. This is the trap. Paragraph 4 lists the questions themselves, which can look like evidence, but listing a question doesn’t show it can’t be answered. The author hedges the claim with “so far as we can see” and offers no argument for it.

D is correct. The author explains philosophy’s thin record by saying a subject leaves “as soon as definite knowledge concerning any subject becomes possible,” so only the unanswered “residue” keeps the name. If answerable questions sat in philosophy for centuries, philosophy held answerable questions all that time and still produced few results, and the relabeling can’t explain the gap.

A. This restates the author’s own pattern with one of his own examples, so it supports him.

B. This is about the doubters in paragraph 1. It may say something about their judgment, but it has no bearing on how fields get their names or why philosophy keeps so few results.

C. Paragraph 4 predicts disagreement for questions that can’t be settled, which are “variously answered by various philosophers,” so this fits the account.

C is correct. Paragraph 2 says the utility of articles valued for their beauty “depends closely upon the expensiveness of the articles,” and the spoons are offered as “a homely illustration” of it. Paragraph 4 generalizes from them, calling the gratification from costly goods “a gratification of our sense of costliness masquerading under the name of beauty.”

A. The passage never discusses who can get hold of goods or how widely they spread. It compares how two spoons are valued, which is a question about taste.

B. The author describes how taste works and gives no advice about what anyone should value. Reading a recommendation into an analysis is a common CARS misreading.

D. Point (1) says the silver isn’t appreciably superior “in point of mechanical serviceability,” and paragraph 2 calls the hand-wrought spoon “commonly a less effective contrivance for its ostensible purpose.” Better making isn’t the author’s reason for the price.

A is correct. Nothing about the spoon’s look or use changes when the owner learns it’s an imitation, since it gives “the same impression of line and surface.” Yet its utility, “including the gratification which the user derives from its contemplation as an object of beauty,” falls “by some eighty or ninety percent.” Only the owner’s belief about its cost and origin changed, so that belief was carrying the pleasure.

B. The trained eye is part of the setup, the condition under which the fake passes. The point would hold however the imitation came to light, so this mistakes a detail of the example for its purpose.

C. The passage allows that a clever imitation can be made, but its argument concerns how owners value objects. It makes no claim about the general progress of machine-made goods.

D. Point (2) assumes the opposite. The imitation is “so cleverly wrought as to give the same impression of line and surface” to anyone but an expert.

D is correct. The passage says our higher appreciation of a costly article is “an appreciation of its superior honorific character,” and that an identical inexpensive copy gains little from looking the same. Buyers of the handmade watch are in the spoon owner’s position. The cost is part of the appeal.

A. Point (1) says the costly material doesn’t greatly excel the other “in intrinsic beauty of grain or color,” and point (3) says near-identical appearance adds little to the value of the less costly article. Differences only an expert could see can’t carry a fiftyfold price in the author’s terms.

B. Point (1) says the costly spoon is no better “in point of mechanical serviceability,” and paragraph 2 calls the hand-wrought spoon “commonly a less effective contrivance.” The author would expect no gain in function.

C. Durability never comes up in the passage. The author’s consistent finding is that costly goods aren’t superior in use, so he’d give no weight to this explanation.

B is correct. He concedes that “the facts are no doubt as the objection states them,” so he accepts the beauty. His three points then show the silver is “some one hundred times more valuable” without “very greatly excelling” aluminum in beauty, and that the gratification collapses when only the spoon’s origin changes. The beauty is there, and it can’t carry the price.

A. Point (1) says silver is valuable “without very greatly excelling” aluminum in beauty, which allows some difference. This choice overstates him, a common trap with qualified claims.

C. The objection keeps beauty and “brute efficiency” apart, and the author keeps the same split in point (1). Nothing in it confuses the two.

D. The author speaks of the user’s gratification in the spoon’s beauty throughout. His claim is about what that gratification responds to.

C is correct. The final sentence says conspicuous wastefulness “is not commonly present, consciously,” yet acts as “a constraining norm” on “our sense of what is beautiful.” The word “masquerading” points the same way, since a masquerade fools the person enjoying it.

A. The last sentence says the requirement of wastefulness “is not commonly present, consciously, in our canons of taste.” Buyers who don’t notice it couldn’t admit to it.

B. The author speaks of “the popular sense of beauty” and of “our” sense of beauty, which takes in everyone, including people who only admire costly goods.

D. Point (3) says a copy that looks the same gains little in beauty once it’s no novelty and costs little. Cost keeps shaping taste after less costly versions spread.

B is correct. Point (2) predicts that learning a prized object is an imitation cuts the owner’s gratification “by some eighty or ninety percent, or even more,” and the author says “the case of the spoons is typical.” A forged painting is the same case with a different object. Buyers whose enjoyment holds steady would show that appearance, which is all that remains, carries the gratification, and that’s the view the author argues against.

A. Displaying the vase less is the drop in gratification point (2) predicts, so this supports the author.

C. Point (2) already assumes an imitation good enough to fool all but “a trained eye,” so expert detection fits the setup. It says nothing about how owners feel once they know.

D. Higher prices for a famous signature fit the author’s view that value follows cost and origin more than appearance.

D is correct. Paragraph 1 sets the problem, finding “some quality common and peculiar” to every object that provokes the aesthetic emotion. Paragraph 2 answers it, naming “Significant Form” as “the one quality common to all works of visual art.” Paragraph 3 defends that answer against the charge of subjectivity.

A. This swaps the response for its cause. The emotion is what works of art provoke, and the quality they share is what provokes it: “‘Significant Form’ is the one quality common to all works of visual art.”

B. Paragraph 3 does argue that aesthetics “must be subjective,” but only to defend the thesis against an objection. The author still holds that one quality is common to all visual art, so this choice keeps his defense and reverses his conclusion.

C. The passage says this in paragraph 3, but it’s one step in his reply to the subjectivity objection. The passage as a whole sets out and defends the claim that significant form is common to all visual art, and criticism is a detail inside that.

B is correct. The list runs from a church to cathedral windows, Mexican sculpture, a Persian bowl, Chinese carpets, frescoes and paintings, across cultures, centuries and materials. If one quality is common to all of them, it can’t be subject matter, material or period, which leaves the arrangement of “lines and colors” the author calls significant form.

A. The list spans many periods and places, which works against the idea of a few great ages.

C. The author says works produce different emotions that are “the same in kind.” This choice makes the emotion identical, and the list proves nothing on its own; it frames the question the author then answers.

D. The works are listed side by side and given equal standing. Nothing in the list orders them.

A is correct. The author’s only test is the viewer’s own feeling. “We have no other means of recognizing a work of art than our feeling for it.” Tiles are close kin to the “pots, carvings, textiles” he lists, and if their lines and colors move the viewer, his theory counts them.

B. Critics can help a viewer see, but “it is useless for a critic to tell me that something is a work of art.” No critic’s approval is needed for the emotion to count.

C. His list of visual art includes buildings, pots and textiles, all practical objects, so usefulness doesn’t disqualify anything.

D. He says “the objects that provoke aesthetic emotion vary with each individual,” so the tiles moving one viewer settles nothing for the rest.

C is correct. The passage says “to be continually pointing out those parts, the sum, or rather the combination, of which unite to produce significant form, is the function of criticism.” The critic works on what the viewer sees, and the emotion follows, since “he must get at my emotions through my eyes.”

A. Ranking tells viewers what to admire, and the author calls telling him that something is art “useless.”

B. History and technique never appear in the passage as the critic’s job. The critic’s work, for the author, is about what the viewer can be made to see.

D. The author says he has “no right to consider anything a work of art to which I cannot react emotionally.” In his account, no critic can make a work count as art for a viewer who feels nothing.

D is correct. In paragraph 1 the author says the emotions are “the same in kind,” so that part isn’t an assumption. The unstated step comes in paragraph 2: “either all works of visual art have some common quality, or when we speak of ‘works of art’ we gibber.” Nothing argues for it. Different objects could produce the same kind of feeling for different reasons, so the author has to assume a single cause in the objects themselves.

A. He says the objects that move people “vary with each individual,” so his argument can’t rest on this.

B. Critics’ agreement plays no role. The starting point is “the personal experience of a peculiar emotion.”

C. Strength never comes up. The argument needs the aesthetic emotion to be one kind of emotion, at any strength.

A is correct. The author allows that “every work produces a different emotion,” so differing emotions alone wouldn’t hurt him. What the argument needs is that all of them are “the same in kind,” which is what lets him put bowls, carpets and frescoes in one class and ask what they share. If bowls and paintings provoke emotions of different kinds, they don’t belong to one class, and significant form has no single class to be common to.

B. The author’s claims are made for those “capable of feeling it,” so people who feel nothing fall outside the theory without harming it.

C. Disagreement fits his view that “the objects that provoke aesthetic emotion vary with each individual.”

D. His theory defines art by the emotion an object provokes, and his examples include a bowl and carpets. What an object was made for doesn’t enter into it.

A is correct. Paragraph 2 says the materialists “write of unimportant things” and “spend immense skill and immense industry making the trivial and the transitory appear the true and the enduring.” Paragraph 1 adds that they are concerned “not with the spirit but with the body,” and paragraph 3 says “the essential thing” escapes the forms they build. Their craft goes to the solid surface of things and misses the life inside.

B. Bennett is “by far the best workman,” so carelessness is the opposite of the charge. The classics come up only to say the quarrel is not with them.

C. Difficulty for readers never comes up. The complaint is about what the books are concerned with.

D. This reverses paragraph 1, where they are concerned “not with the spirit but with the body,” and where Bennett’s craft is praised.

C is correct. The house praises his craft, since a critic can hardly find where “decay can creep in.” The next line turns the praise into the charge: “And yet, if life should refuse to live there?” A sound house can stand empty, and that is her worry about his books.

A. Nothing in the image is plain or modest. The image stresses how solid and tight the building is.

B. The image says the opposite, since even “the most exacting of critics” struggles to find a “chink or crevice.”

D. The house is a figure for how his books are built. It says nothing about what they describe.

D is correct. Paragraph 4 asks the writer to “examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day” and record its “myriad impressions,” and says a free writer would have “no plot, no comedy, no tragedy.” The afternoon novel does what she asks.

A. She treats plot as one of the tyrant’s demands, so its absence is no fault in her eyes.

B. This is the trap. Her complaint about the materialists is that they make trivial things “appear the true and the enduring” through solid construction. Passing impressions belong to the “luminous halo” she calls life, so she’d count them as the right material.

C. She calls writers materialists for building solid fabric around unimportant things. A plotless record of a mind uses the opposite method.

B is correct. The tyrant demands “a plot,” “comedy, tragedy, love, interest, and an air of probability,” the standard parts of a novel. Paragraph 4 names the force when it imagines a writer basing his work “upon his own feeling and not upon convention,” with no plot or comedy “in the accepted style.”

A. Publishers and editors never appear in the passage, so this brings in an outside force the text doesn’t mention.

C. The author counts herself among the writers who obey the tyrant (“we go on perseveringly, conscientiously”), so she isn’t the tyrant.

D. The author wants novels closer to life, and the tyrant’s demands keep them from it, so this reverses the relation.

B is correct. She says Bennett can make a book “so well constructed and solid in its craftsmanship” that critics struggle to fault it, yet all three “have disappointed us” because they’re concerned with the body more than the spirit. Respect and disappointment sit side by side.

A. Her praise of Bennett as “by far the best workman” rules out contempt for their talent.

C. This reverses her view. She doubts their subjects (“they write of unimportant things”) and praises their skill (Bennett is “by far the best workman”).

D. She says “our quarrel is not with the classics,” and a quarrel with these three is engagement, the opposite of indifference.

C is correct. Her charge is that his well-built books may hold no life (“if life should refuse to live there?”) and that “the essential thing” has moved off and “refuses to be contained” in the forms novelists use. Readers finding his books truer to life than plotless ones would count against both claims.

A. The survey is about truth to life, and the author already grants Bennett’s construction. It’s the life in his books she doubts, so the survey speaks to her charge from the other side.

B. She judges by more than craft. Bennett is “by far the best workman” and still “the worst culprit of the three.”

D. Nothing in the survey shows readers preferring trivial things. Reading it that way borrows her word for the materialists and applies it to readers.