CAT 2025 Slot 3 · VARC · Question 11

CAT 2025 Slot 3 previous year question on Para Summary, with the answer and a step-by-step solution.

Para SummaryVerbal AbilityMultiple choiceMedium

The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.

In investigating memory-beliefs, there are certain points which must be borne in mind. In the first place, everything constituting a memory-belief is happening now, not in that past time to which the belief is said to refer. It is not logically necessary to the existence of a memory-belief that the event remembered should have occurred, or even that the past should have existed at all. There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago. Hence the occurrences which are CALLED knowledge of the past are logically independent of the past; they are wholly analysable into present contents, which might, theoretically, be just what they are even if no past had existed.

  1. A

    That which we call 'knowledge of the past' is logically independent of the past, since the act of remembering which forms memory-beliefs happens in the present, and does not need to be based in real past occurrences, or even need a past at all.

  2. B

    When we discuss the concept of memory-beliefs, we must understand that it is not logically impossible for the event remembered to have never happened at all; it could just be a figment of our imagination.

  3. C

    Memory-beliefs depend wholly on what is remembered in the present, and not on anything else; just as it is not logically impossible that the world came into being five minutes ago, and that everyone now just remembers a wholly imaginary past for it.

  4. D

    When investigating memory beliefs, we must keep in mind that an actual past event is not a prerequisite for a memory-belief to exist, and that what we know of the past could theoretically not need a past at all.

Pick an option, then check.
Answer & solution

Answer: Option A

The paragraph builds to a conclusion signalled by 'Hence': the occurrences called knowledge of the past 'are logically independent of the past; they are wholly analysable into present contents'. A summary must carry that conclusion, together with the premise – everything constituting a memory-belief is happening now.

Option 1 carries both. It names the conclusion by its own term, 'logically independent of the past', and gives the reason, that remembering happens in the present and needs no real past occurrence.

Option 4 is the closest rival and reads well, but it stops at the premise. It says an actual past event is not a prerequisite and that knowledge of the past may need no past, which is the argument's material; it never states the conclusion that such knowledge is logically independent of the past.

Option 2 is narrower still. It reports only that the remembered event need not have happened, and adds 'it could just be a figment of our imagination', a psychological claim the paragraph does not make – the argument is about logical necessity, not about imagination.

Option 3 misstates the claim. 'Memory-beliefs depend wholly on what is remembered in the present' is not the paragraph's point; the point is that they are analysable into present contents regardless of whether a past existed. The five-minute hypothesis is also demoted to an aside with 'just as', when in the paragraph it is the device that proves the point.

Shortcut: in a philosophical paragraph, find the sentence beginning 'Hence', 'Therefore' or 'Thus' – that is the conclusion – and keep only the summary that reproduces it. Options that stop at the premises are the standard near-miss.

Hence, the answer is option 1.

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