CAT 2025 Slot 3 Question Paper
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.
Imagine a world in which artificial intelligence is entrusted with the highest moral responsibilities: sentencing criminals, allocating medical resources, and even mediating conflicts between nations. This might seem like the pinnacle of human progress: an entity unburdened by emotion, prejudice or inconsistency, making ethical decisions with impeccable precision. . . .
Yet beneath this vision of an idealised moral arbiter lies a fundamental question: can a machine understand morality as humans do, or is it confined to a simulacrum of ethical reasoning? AI might replicate human decisions without improving on them, carrying forward the same biases, blind spots and cultural distortions from human moral judgment. In trying to emulate us, it might only reproduce our limitations, not transcend them. But there is a deeper concern. Moral judgment draws on intuition, historical awareness and context - qualities that resist formalisation. Ethics may be so embedded in lived experience that any attempt to encode it into formal structures risks flattening its most essential features. If so, AI would not merely reflect human shortcomings; it would strip morality of the very depth that makes ethical reflection possible in the first place.
Still, many have tried to formalise ethics, by treating certain moral claims not as conclusions, but as starting points. A classic example comes from utilitarianism, which often takes as a foundational axiom the principle that one should act to maximise overall wellbeing. From this, more specific principles can be derived, for example, that it is right to benefit the greatest number, or that actions should be judged by their consequences for total happiness. As computational resources increase, AI becomes increasingly well-suited to the task of starting from fixed ethical assumptions and reasoning through their implications in complex situations.
But what, exactly, does it mean to formalise something like ethics? The question is easier to grasp by looking at fields in which formal systems have long played a central role. Physics, for instance, has relied on formalisation for centuries. There is no single physical theory that explains everything. Instead, we have many physical theories, each designed to describe specific aspects of the Universe: from the behaviour of quarks and electrons to the motion of galaxies. These theories often diverge. Aristotelian physics, for instance, explained falling objects in terms of natural motion toward Earth's centre; Newtonian mechanics replaced this with a universal force of gravity. These explanations are not just different; they are incompatible. Yet both share a common structure: they begin with basic postulates - assumptions about motion, force or mass - and derive increasingly complex consequences. . . .
Ethical theories have a similar structure. Like physical theories, they attempt to describe a domain - in this case, the moral landscape. They aim to answer questions about which actions are right or wrong, and why. These theories also diverge and, even when they recommend similar actions, such as giving to charity, they justify them in different ways. Ethical theories also often begin with a small set of foundational principles or claims, from which they reason about more complex moral problems.
CAT 2025 Slot 3 - Question 21
Choose the one option below that comes closest to being the opposite of “utilitarianism”.
CAT 2025 Slot 3 - Question 22
Which one of the options below best summarises the passage?
CAT 2025 Slot 3 - Question 23
The passage compares ethics to physics, where different theories apply to different aspects of a domain and says AI can reason from fixed starting points in complex cases. Which one of the assumptions below must hold for that comparison to guide practice?
CAT 2025 Slot 3 - Question 24
All of the following can reasonably be inferred from the passage EXCEPT:
Seven children, Aarav, Bina, Chirag, Diya, Eshan, Farhan, and Gaurav, are sitting in a circle facing inside (not necessarily in the same order) and playing a game of 'Passing the Buck'.
The game is played over 10 rounds. In each round, the child holding the Buck must pass it directly to a child sitting in one of the following positions:
• Immediately to the left;
• Immediate to the right;
• Second to the left; or
• Second to the right.
The game starts with Bina passing the Buck and ends with Chirag receiving the Buck. The table below provides some information about the pass types and the child receiving the Buck. Some information is missing and labelled as '?'.
CAT 2025 Slot 3 - Question 27
For which of the following pass types can the total number of occurrences be uniquely determined?
CAT 2025 Slot 3 - Question 28
For which of the following children is it possible to determine how many times they received the Buck?
Aurevia, Brelosia, Cyrenia and Zerathania are four countries with their currencies being Aurels, Brins, Crowns, and Zentars, respectively. The currencies have different exchange values. Crown's currency exchange rate with Zentars = 0.5, i.e., 1 Crown is worth 0.5 Zentars.
Three travelers, Jano, Kira, and Lian set out from Zerathania visiting exactly two of the countries. Each country is visited by exactly two travelers. Each traveler has a unique Flight Cost, which represents the total cost of airfare in traveling to both the countries and back to Zerathania. The Flight Cost of Jano was 4000 Zentars, while that of the other two travelers were 5000 and 6000 Zentars, not necessarily in that order. When visiting a country, a traveler spent either 1000, 2000 or 3000 in the country's local currency. Each traveler had different spends (in the country's local currency) in the two countries he/she visited. Across all the visits, there were exactly two spends of 1000 and exactly one spend of 3000 (in the country's local currency).
The total “Travel Cost” for a traveler is the sum of his/her Flight Cost and the money spent in the countries visited.
The citizens of the four countries with knowledge of these travels made a few observations, with spends measured in their respective local currencies:
i. Aurevia citizen: Jano and Kira visited our country, and their Travel Costs were 3500 and 8000, respectively.
ii. Brelosia citizen: Kira and Lian visited our country, spending 2000 and 3000, respectively. Kira's Travel Cost was 4000.
iii. Cyrenia citizen: Lian visited our country and her Travel Cost was 36000.
CAT 2025 Slot 3 - Question 29
What is the sum of Travel Costs for all travelers in Zentars?
789
456
123
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CAT 2025 Slot 3 - Question 30
How many Zentars did Lian spend in the two countries he visited?
789
456
123
0.-
Clear All
