早稲田法 2015 II

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II Read the passage and answer the questions below.

① Throughout history, the lack of knowledge about what is going on in the minds of infants and animals has generated guesswork, projection, and imagination. But in the past twenty years, ingenious laboratory experiments and discoveries in evolutionary biology have been opening windows of understanding that had once been thought permanently shuttered. Contemporary developmental research is changing our understanding of the interaction between nature and nurture.

② Paul Bloom, a developmental psychologist at Yale University, argues that Thomas Jefferson, the American philosopher and president, was right when he wrote: "The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree." Some aspects of morality, says Bloom, "come naturally to us," including empathy and compassion, an ability to distinguish kind from cruel actions, a rudimentary sense of fairness, and a rudimentary sense of justice. "Rudimentary" is critical, of course. No one disputes that culture, family, and society work on those rudiments to shape, enhance, or extinguish those qualities.

③ Still, how would one measure "the moral sense" in a baby? Here's an example from Bloom that illustrates the method and the results:

The one-year-old decided to take justice into his own hands. He had just watched a puppet show with three characters. The puppet in the middle rolled a ball to the puppet on the right, who passed it right back to him. It then rolled the ball to the puppet on the left, who ran away with it. At the end of the show, the "nice" puppet and the "naughty" puppet were brought down from the stage and set before the boy. A treat was placed in front of each of them, and the boy was invited to take one of the treats away. As predicted, and like most toddlers in this experiment, he took it from the "naughty" one―the one who ran away with the ball. But this wasn't enough. The boy then leaned over and smacked the puppet on the head.

④ Bloom explains that by "moral" he means an inherent sense of right and wrong that is not learned, not taught in school or by religion, but which is the product of biological evolution. At its base, he argues, morality reflects our gut feelings that certain acts are just plain wrong―cruel, unkind, unfair, violations of human dignity. Any theory of moral psychology has to explain how these intuitions work and where they come from.

⑤ Although the notion of the "rational man" has long predicted that people seek to maximize their own gains, the fact is that the "fairness bias" often trumps selfishness. "It's not fair!" a small child will cry, and is usually right. Monkeys offered a treat they would normally enjoy may throw it on the ground in disgust if they see a neighboring monkey getting a better treat, and dogs, chimpanzees, and young children show the same signs of being bothered if they get a smaller reward than someone else. Or consider a two-person psychological experiment called the Ultimatum Game, in which your partner gets a sum of money and must decide how much to share with you. You can choose to accept your partner's offer, in which case you both get to keep your respective portions, or you can reject the offer, in which case neither of you gets a cent. How low an offer would you accept? It makes "rational" sense to accept any amount at all, no matter how insignificant, because then at least you will get something. But that is not how people respond in this game. If the offer is too low, they are likely to reject it. For players in industrial societies, offers below 20 or 30 percent are commonly rejected, even when the amounts they would receive are large. For players in other societies, the percentages may be higher or lower, but there is always some percentage that people consider unfair and refuse to accept.

⑥ Cooperative tendencies and a desire for fairness evolved because they were beneficial to our ancestors, ensuring teamwork and harmony among members of a group. Unfortunately, the evolutionary price of that harmony and helpfulness toward our own kind is hostility and prejudice toward strangers and competition with outgroups. Currently, there is a fashionable temptation to embrace biological and evolutionary reductionism to explain this, to believe that "that's how we are built, for better or worse; we can't do much about it; we are irrational creatures after all." The missing ingredient in such an account is reason. Reason has driven not only scientific discoveries, but also moral progress, such as awareness of the wrongness of slavery. Moral progress is learned in individuals; kindness toward strangers is lacking in babies and young children.

⑦An encompassing theory of our moral lives must acknowledge its two parts. The first is the rich biological inheritance that evolution has provided: empathy, compassion, the capacity to judge the actions of others, and a rudimentary understanding of justice and fairness. We are more than just babies, however; a critical part of our morality―so much of what makes us human―emerges over the course of human history and individual development. It is the product of our compassion, our imagination, and our magnificent capacity for reason.

[Adapted from Carol Tavris, "Cradles of Civilization," Times Literary Supplement (June 13, 2014).]

(1) Choose the best way to complete the following sentences about Paragraphs ① to ⑦

1 In Paragraph ① the writer mainly

2 In Paragraph ② the writer mainly

3 In Paragraph ③ the writer mainly

4 In Paragraph ④ the writer mainly

5 In Paragraph. ⑤ the writer mainly

6 In Paragraph ⑥ the writer mainly

7 In Paragraph ⑦ the writer mainly

A argues that human morality is based partly on an inherited ability to empathize with others, and partly on what we learn over the course of time.

B casts doubt on the notion that a person will accept any small gain, even if it is less than what another receives.

C criticizes the views of those who dispute that culture, family, and society influence the development of human morality.

D describes a psychologist's remark about a former American leader's belief that all human beings have at least some sense of what is right and what is wrong.

E explains that new research enables us to see into the minds of those who cannot explain themselves in words, such as babies and animals.

F lists forms of entertainment, such as violent puppet shows, that human beings once enjoyed but no longer do.

G maintains that babies and young children have a moral sense that makes them sympathetic to strangers.

H outlines an experiment that shows that most people will accept 20 to 30 percent of an offer to share, so long as that offer comes from a partner from the same society.

I points out that there is nothing we can do about our tendency to feel hostility toward strangers, because such feelings developed through human evolution.

J provides evidence that babies as young as twelve months old understand the concepts of "fair" and "unfair."

K puts forward one researcher's definition of the concept of "moral."

L states that it is possible to overcome our suspicion of people who are different from us by the use of reason.

(2) Choose the ONE way to complete each of these sentences that is NOT correct according to the passage.

1 Babies and young children

A have a moral sense that researchers have recently found ways to observe.

B in the experiment tended to take the treat from the puppet they felt had behaved unfairly.

C lack feelings of compassion for those they do not know.

D lack knowledge, imagination, and the ability to generate guesswork.

E were once thought to have minds to which researchers could not gain access.

2 In the Ultimatum Game

A one player can accept the offer of the other player to share a set amount of money, and in return both players can keep their respective portions.

B one player can reject the offer of the other player to share a set amount of money, and in return neither player receives anything.

C one player must decide how much of a set amount of money to share with the other player.

D players from the industrialized world are reluctant to accept less than a third to a fifth of a set amount of money.

E players from the non-industrialized world usually agree to accept any amount of money, so that both players can keep their respective portions.

3 Moral sense

A is something that develops in different directions, depending on the culture we are born into and our family life.

B is something that enables us to tell right from wrong, fair from unfair, and compassionate from cruel.

C is something that evolved because it helped us to recognize members of our own group and behave with hostility to outsiders.

D is something that we are born with and exists prior to whatever influences we receive from religion and/or education.

E is something that we are born with and yet is also subject to reason, which accounts for our ability to make moral progress.

(3) Choose the best way to complete each of these sentences, which refer to the underlined words in the passage.

1 Here "rudimentary" means

A acceptable. B basic. C easy. D satisfactory. E systematic.

2 Here "trumps" means

A beats. B invents. C prejudices. D simplifies. E threatens.

3 Here "embrace" means

A avoid. B conceal. C hug. D include. E oppose.

(4) Find the vowel with the strongest stress in each of these words, as used in the passage. Choose the ONE which is pronounced DIFFERENTLY in each group of five.

1 A compassion B empathy C fashionable D interaction E naturally

2 A dignity B intuition C predicted D religion E rudiments

3 A embrace B irrational C slavery D strangers E ultimatum