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TEXT D Unlike any other scientific topics, consciousness—the first-person awareness of the world around—is truly in the eye of beholder. I know I am conscious. But how do I know that you are Through logical analogy—I am a conscious human being, and therefore you as a human being are also likely to be conscious—I conclude I am probably not the only conscious being in a world of biological puppets. Extend it to other creatures, and uncertainty grows. Is a dog conscious An elm A rock "We don’t have the mythical consciousness meter," said Dr. Chalmers, a professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. "All we have directly to go on is behavior." So without even an elementary understanding of what consciousness is, the idea of instilling it into a machine—or understanding how a machine might evolve consciousness—becomes almost unfathomable. The field of artificial intelligence started out with dreams of making thinking or conscious machines, but to debate, its achievements have been modest. The field has evolved to focus more on solving practical problems like complex scheduling tasks than on imitating human behavior. But many believe that the original goals of artificial intelligence will be attainable within a few decades. Some people, like Dr. Hans Moravec, a professor of robotics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, believe a human being is nothing more than a fancy machine, and that it will be possible to build a machine with the same features, that there is nothing magical about the brain and biological flesh. "I’m confident we can build robot with behavior that is just as rich as human being behavior," he said. "You could quiz it as much as you like about its internal mental life, and it would answer as any human being." To Dr. Moravec, if it acts consciously, it is conscious. To ask more is pointless. Dr. Chalmers, regards consciousness as an unutterable trait, and it may be useless to try to pin it down. "We’ve got to admit something here is irreducible," he said. "Some primitive precursor consciousness could go all the way down" to the smallest, most primitive organisms, he said. Dr. Chalmers too sees nothing fundamentally different between a creature of flesh and blood and one of metal, plastics and electronic circuits. "I’m quite open to the idea that machines might eventually become conscious," he said, adding that it would be "equally weird". And if a person gets into involved conversations with a robot about everything from Kant to baseball, "We’ll be as practically certain they are conscious as other people," he said. "Of course, that doesn’t resolve the theoretical question". But others say machines, regardless of how complex, will never match people. The arguments can become mysterious. In his book Shadows of the Mind, Dr. Roger Penrose, a mathematician at Oxford University, enlisted the incompleteness theorem in mathematics. He uses the theorem, which states that any system of theorems will invariably include statements that cannot be proven, to argue that any machine that uses computation—and hence all robots—will invariably fall short of the accomplishments of human mathematicians. Instead, he argues that consciousness is an effect of quantum mechanics in tiny structures in the brain that exceeds the abilities of any computer. According to the passage, ______ may be the most reliable touchstone for consciousness.
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TEXT C The National Trust in Britain, together with similar voluntary organizations, plays an increasingly important part in the preservation for public enjoyment of the best that is left unspoiled of the British countryside. Although the Trust has received practical and moral support from the government, it is not a rich government, supported by public taxes. It is a voluntary association of people who care for the unspoiled countryside and the ancient sites to preserve them for the permanent enjoyment of the public. It is a charity, which depends for its existence on voluntary support from members of the public. It has 160,000 members in England, Wales and Northern Ireland who pay a small subscription each year, and its primary duties are to protect for the nation places of great natural beauty and places of historical interest and preserve them from the dangers of modem development and extinction. The attention of the public was first drawn to the dangers threatening the great old houses and castles of Britain by the late Lord Lothian, who in 1935 said that, as a result of taxation and estate duty, most of these ancient houses were under sentence of death. When he died he left his great seventh century house and all its contents to the Trust Together with 4,500-acre park and estate surrounding it. This gift attracted wide publicity and it started the Trust’s "Country House Scheme". Under the scheme, with the cooperation of the government and thanks to the generosity of the general public, the Trust has been able to save and make accessible to the public about one hundred and fifty of these old houses, together with often very valuable contents. Whenever possible, the Trust seeks to maintain continuity and to preserve these as living realities rather than as dead museums. It is the view of the Trust that the families who give them to the nation and whose ancestors created them make the best possible curators. In addition to country houses and open spaces the Trust now owns some examples of ancient wind and water mills, gardens, Roman antiquities, farms and small villages, cultural parks, as well as complete villages. In these villages no one is allowed to build, develop or disturb the old village environment and all houses completely maintain their original sixteenth-century style. The public definitely has free access to these areas and is only asked to respect the peace, beauty and wildlife. The preservation was part of history of Britain, and is now practiced by its organization, certainly will be carried on in the future, therefore, those cultural and historical relics will exist forever as long as people care for the environment in which they are living, both natural and cultural. What is the possible meaning of "subscription" in the first paragraph
TEXT A Inside his small office, Jim Sedlak picks the receiver and listens as worried callers sound off about the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s newest clinic of its distribution of pamphlets in their area. They don’t like it, they tell him, but they don’t know how to stop it. So Sedlak leans back in his chair and, drawing on almost 20 years of experience, tells them how tiny anti-abortion groups can tackle the nation’s largest abortion-rights group. Sedlak has been taking aim at Planned Parenthood for years through his small, grassroots anti-abortion organization, American Life League’s STOPP International, a two-man group whose sole mission is to bring down its giant ideological opponent. Planned Parenthood normally brushes off attacks from such "fringe groups", reserving its considerable strength for reproductive healthcare services and advocacy. But it’s hard to ignore recent anti-abortion legislative victories like the ban on so-called partial birth abortion passed in November, the more recent Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which defines fetuses as unborn children, and similar state measures against fetal homicide. Anti-abortion activities regaining ground, and that has forced Planned Parenthood to take a closer lock at the opposition. "It gives us a big challenge," Planned Parenthood President Gloria Feldt told NEWSWEEK, "but we’re ready." Feldt has learned that even individual efforts can have nationwide ripple effects. Take the case of John Pisciotta, director of Pro-life Waco and a Baylor University economies professor, who sparked a furor in Waco, Texas, this February when he decided to attack the relationship between the local Gift Scouts council and Planned Parenthood. The council, long a participant in a half-day Planned Parenthood conference on puberty education had ignored Pisciotta’s pleas to distance itself from what he considered "an assault on Christian morality." After chatting with Sedlak, a longtime friend, Psciotta recorded a 60-second spot for a Christian radio station urging listeners to reconsider supporting the scouts. Then, he asked them to boycott their Thin Mints. The cookie boycott wasn’t successful—sales actually rose 2 percent—hot the local council did break off its relationship with the group. And, much to Pisciotta’s surprise, his local concern became a national one. STOPP was flooded with phone calls from angry parents demanding to know whether their councils were linked with Planned Parenthood. Individual Girl Scouts troops have autonomy in choosing their programs, and national CEO Kim Cloninger has said that those aligned with Planned Parenthood would continue their relationships. Sedlak compile a list of them that he posted online last week. It’s up to individual viewers, he says, to decide what to do with that information. From the passage we know that the boycott of Thin Mints was ______.
TEXT B Whether work should be placed among the causes of happiness or among the causes of unhappiness may perhaps be regarded as a doubtful question. There is certainly much work that is exceedingly weary and an excess of work is always very painful. I think, however, that provided work is not excessive in amount, even the dullest work is to most people less painful than idleness. There are in work all grades, from mere relief of tedium up to the profoundest delights, according to the nature of the work and the abilities of the workers. Most of the work that most people have to do is net in itself interesting, but even such work has certain great advantages. To begin with, it fills a good many hours of the day without the need of deciding what one shall do. Most people, when they are left free to fill their own time according to their choice, are at a loss to think of anything sufficiently pleasant to be worth doing. And whatever they decide on, they are troubled by the feeling that something else would have been pleasanter. To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level. Moreover the exercise of choice is in itself tiresome. Except to people with unusual initiative it is positively agreeable to be told what to do at each hour of the day, provided the orders are not too much unpleasant. Most of idle rich men suffer unutterable boredom as the price of their freedom from toil. At times, they may find relief by hunting big game in Africa, or by flying round the world, but number of such sensation is limited, especially after youth is past. Accordingly the more intelligent rich men work nearly as hard as if they were poor, while rich women for the most part keep themselves busy with innumerable trifles of whose earthshaking importance they are firmly persuaded. Work therefore is desirable, first and foremost, as a preventive of boredom, for the boredom that a man feels when he is doing necessary though uninteresting work is as nothing in comparison with the boredom that he feels when he has nothing to do with his days. With this advantage of work another is associated, namely that it makes holidays much more precious when they come. Provided a man does not have to work so hard as to impair his vigor, he is likely to find far more zest in his free time than an idle man could possibly find. The second advantage of most paid work and of some unpaid work is that it gives chances of success and opportunities for ambition. In most work success is measured by income, and while our capitalistic society continues, this is inevitable. It is only where the best work is concerned that this measure ceased to be the natural one to apply. The desire that men feel to increase their income is quite as much a desire for success as for the extra comforts that a higher income can acquire. However dull work may be, it becomes bearable if it is means of building up a reputation, whether in the world at large or only in one’s own circle. What is the author’s opinion about work
美国的房地产经纪行业起步较早，发展较快，规模庞大，作用显著。目前，美国房地产经纪业几乎已渗透到房地产交易市场的每个角落，85%左右的房产买卖都是通过经纪机构来实现的。行业运作规范社会地位较高，受到广大购房或售房者的信任和欢迎。他们在业务操作和组织管理中有着一整套成功的经验，值得我们借鉴或参考。他们的现状特点有： 在美国，房地产销售制度中占主流的是房地产经纪人的独家代理、联合销售制度。这种制度的实施所起到的效应有( )。
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