A expressão "on a par" mencionada no texto de Paul N. Edwards não significa "competing", ou seja, competindo. No contexto do texto, a expressão é utilizada para indicar que todas as crenças são consideradas igualmente problemáticas no que diz respeito às causas de sua credibilidade. A passagem do texto especifica:

"Our equivalence postulate is that all beliefs are on a par with one another with respect to the causes of their credibility. It is not that all beliefs are equally true or equally false, but that regardless of truth and falsity the fact of their credibility is to be seen as equally problematic…" (R. 20-25) 

Em português, isso pode ser traduzido como:

"Nosso postulado de equivalência é que todas as crenças são comparáveis umas às outras no que diz respeito às causas de sua credibilidade. Não é que todas as crenças sejam igualmente verdadeiras ou igualmente falsas, mas que, independentemente da verdade e da falsidade, o fato de sua credibilidade deve ser visto como igualmente problemático..." 

A expressão "on a par" é, portanto, empregada para enfatizar a igualdade de tratamento das crenças em relação à análise de sua credibilidade, sem indicar uma competição entre elas, mas sim uma equivalência em termos de seu questionamento ou avaliação.

Dada esta explicação, a afirmativa que diz que "on a par" significa "competing" está incorreta.

Gabarito: Letra E

The expression “on a par” (R. 20 and 21) means competing.

Considering the grammatical and semantic aspects of text V,
decide whether the following items are right (C) or wrong (E).


As Hegel observed of the emerging democracies of the
nineteenth century, in the universe of modern political subjects
“what is to be authoritative… derives its authority, not at all
from force, only to a small extent from habit and custom, really
from insight and argument.” Under democracies, at least,
argumentation complements pure force and arbitrary choice as
a basic source of world-shaping decisions. Rationality itself has
become a source of power; consensual political systems require
agreement in thought as well as acquiescence in behavior.
Twisting the liberalism of Hegel’s point in light of decades of
discussion of the politics of representation, we must ask how
any given claim comes to count as an insight and from what
source arguments derive their social force.
This problem has been addressed most explicitly in the
sociology of knowledge. Recent social studies of science have
termed the epistemological standpoint that assumes a relation
between power and knowledge an “equivalence postulate”.
Barry Barnes and David Bloor, for example, describe this
position as follows:
“Our equivalence postulate is that all beliefs are on a
par with one another with respect to the causes of their
credibility. It is not that all beliefs are equally true or equally
false, but that regardless of truth and falsity the fact of their
credibility is to be seen as equally problematic… Regardless of
whether the sociologist evaluates a belief as true or rational, or
as false and irrational, he must search for the causes of its
credibility. Is a belief enjoined by the authorities of the society?
Is it transmitted by established institutions of socialization or
supported by accepted agencies of social control? Is it bound
up with patterns of vested interest?” (…)
Instead of looking for fixed, universal laws of logic
guaranteeing the connection of particular phenomena to general
concepts, sociologists of knowledge seek the learned,
contingent principles of thought actually used by human
groups. (…) To investigate signification and justification as
social practices, we have to explain why cognitive approaches
differ without appealing to the ‘facts’ of the world.
Paul N. Edwards. The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of

O enunciado pede para avaliar se os aspectos gramaticais e semânticos do texto V indicam que as crenças devem ser julgadas apenas pelos fatos como padrão. No trecho destacado no texto, vemos a discussão em torno da "equivalence postulate", que afirma que todas as crenças, independentemente de serem verdadeiras ou falsas, têm a credibilidade como algo igualmente problemático:

"It is not that all beliefs are equally true or equally false, but that regardless of truth and falsity the fact of their credibility is to be seen as equally problematic…" 

Essa abordagem sugere que em vez de julgar uma crença apenas por ser 'verdadeira' ou 'falsa' com base nos fatos, deve-se investigar as causas de sua credibilidade. Isto é, um exame sobre quem endossa a crença, quem a transmite e quem a apoia. Esta metodologia se alinha com uma visão mais sociológica e contextual sobre crenças, contrastando com a ideia de que os "fatos" sozinhos devem ser o padrão arbitral. Isso revela que o texto não está alinhado com a ideia de que os fatos são o único padrão para definir crenças.

Além disso, o autor do texto, Paul N. Edwards, argumenta que os sociólogos do conhecimento buscam princípios de pensamento que são aprendidos e contingentes, utilizados por grupos humanos, em vez de buscar leis lógicas universais e fixas. Este ponto reforça a compreensão de que o julgamento das crenças não repousa exclusivamente sobre uma base factual estrita:

"Instead of looking for fixed, universal laws of logic guaranteeing the connection of particular phenomena to general concepts, sociologists of knowledge seek the learned, contingent principles of thought actually used by human groups." 

A questão, então, ao afirmar que o texto sugere que 'fatos devem ser julgados como o único padrão' é incorreta, visto que o texto aponta para uma avaliação mais ampla e multifacetada das crenças. Portanto, a alternativa que diz que essa afirmação é correta está errada.

Gabarito: Letra E

The text asserts that facts should be judged to be the sole
standard against which to define beliefs.

Para responder a questão sobre a substituição do termo "pinpoint" (na linha 10 do texto) por outra expressão sem alterar o significado geral da frase, é importante analisar o contexto em que ele é usado:

No texto, a frase original é:
<blockquote>
"it was much harder to pinpoint an American speaker’s background in the same way."
</blockquote>
Tradução:
<blockquote>
"era muito mais difícil identificar detalhadamente a origem de um falante americano da mesma maneira."
</blockquote>

A palavra "pinpoint" aqui implica em identificar com precisão ou detalhe. A característica dessa palavra é sua precisão, sugerindo não apenas identificar de maneira geral, mas fazer isso com um alto grau de exatidão.

Sem acesso à proposta específica de substituição na alternativa marcada (correta ou incorreta), podemos inferir que a marcação como errada (E) sugere que a substituição proposta não manteve a mesma precisão no significado que "pinpoint" originalmente conveys.

Palavras como “determine”, “identify”, ou “recognize” poderiam ser consideradas, mas cada uma delas carrega nuances que podem ou não corresponder ao sentido exato de "pinpoint". Se a substituição proposta não reflete a especificidade e a precisão, a marcação como errada estaria justificada.

Gabarito: Letra E

In text IV, without altering the general meaning of the sentence,
“pinpoint” (R.10) could be replaced by (mark right — C —
or wrong — E)


When did Americans start sounding funny to English
ears? The story is not as simple as some believe. Thanks to a
remarkable kind of linguistic melting pot process, early
Americans spoke with a standard dialect all their own that was
often met with approval by English observers, in contrast to
how certain American accents are sometimes judged today.
From the early eighteenth century, while British
English speakers could easily reveal details about their
background through their speech, it was much harder to
pinpoint an American speaker’s background in the same way.
Many described the American dialect of the day as being,
surprisingly, pretty close to the accepted British grammatical
standard of London “polite” society, even if there were some
accent differences and linguistic variation. While these would
have been indicators of lower status in England, in colonial
America speakers of all classes and regions might have used
these forms, diluting them as signs of social status.
Some fairly resilient linguistic myths have arisen as
folk explanations for why British and American dialects are the
way they are, including the often-cited belief that Shakespeare
sounded much more American than he did British, and thus
American English must be free from any modern linguistic
“corruption” that followed.
George Philip Krapp, among others, makes a
compelling argument against the theory that a transplanted
dialect or language suddenly has its linguistic development
arrested, so that examples like American English or Acadian
French must simply be more archaic than the dialects that
continued evolving in their home countries.
Far from being an isolated community, the American
colonies developed culturally and linguistically while being in
constant contact with the outside world and with a healthy flow
of immigrants from many different backgrounds. The truth is,
in the context of a linguistic melting pot, a kind of linguistic
leveling occurs, and a common mode of speech, or koine,
emerges. No single dialect is really transplanted intact and
unchanging. American English is not eighteenth-century British
English frozen in time while British English varieties changed
in a different direction. American English behaves no
differently from any other dialect in this way; it develops and
innovates but also maintains certain linguistic characteristics
meaningful to its speech community, in the same way that
British English does.
But in order for linguistic innovation to really take
root, you need a bunch of colonial babies. The founding
generation of settlers wasn’t immediately followed by a huge
influx of immigrants with other dialects and languages until an
American koine was already mostly established by newer
generations of Americans, at which point more recent
immigrant waves began to adopt the prevailing ways of
speaking. Many eventually abandoned their native tongue and
assimilated into the wider linguistic community.
So by the time of the signing of the Declaration of
Independence, it’s clear Americans didn’t have to hold their
tongue with the British — they spoke with the national dialect
that had steadily evolved for at least two generations before
1776.

No que se refere a fatores que contribuíram para a configuração
do território da América portuguesa colonial, julgue (C ou E)
os itens a seguir.


Sertanistas de São Paulo penetraram no interior da América
do Sul nos séculos XVI e XVII, viabilizando a ocupação
da região pelos portugueses.

Pelo Tratado de Madri, de 1750, a Espanha aceitou a posse
portuguesa do Mato Grosso, da Amazônia e da margem
oriental do rio da Prata.

Questões de Concurso IRB Brasil RE