English Test 59
Directions for Questions from 1 to 5:
The passage given below is followed by a question. Choose the most appropriate answer to each question.
Our propensity to look out for regularities, and to impose laws upon nature, leads to the psychological phenomenon of dogmatic thinking or, more
generally, dogmatic behaviour: we expect regularities everywhere and attempt to find them even where there are none; events which do not yield
to these attempts we are inclined to treat as a kind of ‘background noise‘; and we stick to our expectations even when they are inadequate and
we ought to accept defeat. This dogmatism is to some extent necessary. It is demanded by a situation which can only be dealt with by forcing our
conjectures upon the world. Moreover, this dogmatism allows us to approach a good theory in stages, by way of approximations: if we accept
defeat too easily, we may prevent ourselves from finding that we were very nearly right.
It is clear that this dogmatic attitude, which makes us stick to our first impressions, is indicative of a strong belief; while a critical attitude, which is
ready to modify its tenets, which admits doubt and demands tests, is indicative of a weaker belief. Now according to Hume‘s theory, and to the
popular theory, the strength of a belief should be a product of repetition; thus it should always grow with experience, and always be greater in less
primitive persons. But dogmatic thinking, an uncontrolled wish to impose regularities, a manifest pleasure in rites and in repetition as such, is
characteristic of primitives and children; and increasing experience and maturity sometimes create an attitude of caution and criticism rather than of
dogmatism.
My logical criticism of Hume‘s psychological theory, and the considerations connected with it, may seem a little removed from the field of the
philosophy of science. But the distinction between dogmatic and critical thinking, or the dogmatic and the critical attitude, brings us right back to our
central proble