Self-study
One of the great difficulties in establishing animal rights based merely on the fact that animals are living things concerns scope. ██ ███ █████████ ███ ████ ███████ ███████ ████████ ███ ██ █████ ██ ██████ ██████ ██ █████████ ████ ███ ███ ███████ ██████ ████████ ███ ██ ████ ████ ██ █████████ █████████ ███ ██ ███ ██ ██████ ██████ ██ █████████ █████ ██ █████ █████████████ ███ ██████████ ███████ ██ ███ ██████ ████████
Stimulus Summary
The stimulus describes a difficulty with establishing animal rights based only on the premise that animals are "living things." If we take a broad definition of "living things," then we would have to grant rights to things that are also living, but not animals, like plants. If we define "living things" narrowly, we might deny rights to some creatures that are biologically classified as animals.
Potential Inferences
While we could identify some of the assumptions made by this argument, since this is a Most Strongly Supported Question, it makes more sense to focus on potential inferences — or, just as importantly, anything we know we can't infer from the argument. One big thing to notice is that, though the argument points out difficulties establishing animal rights, the existence of difficulties doesn't mean that it's impossible to establish animal rights. It could be possible to define "living things" in a way that is neither too broad nor too narrow, or we could establish animal rights on a different basis than merely the fact that animals are living things.
For a question like this one, where we don't necessarily have a direct chain of logic to draw inferences from, it can be useful to get a sense of what we can't infer — i.e., the limitations of the information we're given — and then go to the answer choices.
24.
If the statements above are █████ █████ ███ ██ ███ █████████ ███ ██ ████ ██████████ ████████ ████ █████
a
Not all animals ██████ ██ █████ ███████
Nothing in the stimulus suggests that not all animals "should" be given rights. This is a value judgment that isn't supported by the stimulus, which is simply descriptive.
b
One cannot bestow ██████ ██ ███████ ███████ ████ █████████ ██████ ██ ██ █████ ████ ███████
We can't infer this from the stimulus. This answer choice suggests that one can only bestow rights on animals by taking a broad definition of "living things," which isn't what the stimulus says. The stimulus just describes the consequences of defining "living things" broadly versus narrowly, without claiming that either one is a better option, let alone the only option that allows rights to be extended to animals.
c
The problem of ███████████ ███ ████████ ██ ███ ███ ██ ██████ ██████ ██████████ ████ █████ ███████ ██ █████████ ██████ ███████
This answer choice would be correct if it said that defining the scope of "living things" interfered with every attempt to establish animal rights based merely on the fact that animals are living things. As it stands, the stimulus doesn't actually tell us about every attempt to establish animal rights — just the attempt to establish animal rights based on one specific premise. So we can't infer this answer choice from the stimulus.
d
Successful attempts to █████████ ██████ ███ ███ ███████ ███ ██████ ██████ ██ █████████ ██████ ███ ████ ██████ ██ ███ ██ ██████ ██████ ██ ███ ███████████ ████ ███████ ███ ██████ ███████
While this might seem like a bit of a jump from the stimulus, notice what this answer choice is specifically talking about: a successful attempt to establish rights for all animals.
Based on the information in the stimulus, there are two likely possibilities. Establishing rights for all animals could be based only on the premise that animals are living things, if we take a broad definition of "living things" that also includes some plants. On the other hand, if we take a narrow definition of "living things" — the only alternative scenario we know about — and still somehow guarantee rights for all animals, we know we can't be relying only on the premise that animals are "living things," since the narrow definition of "living things" excludes some animals. We must be relying on some additional premise.
So this answer choice is strongly supported by the stimulus.
e
The fact that ███████ ███ ██████ ██████ ██ ██████████ ██ ███ ████████ ██ ███████ ███████ ██████ ██ ██████ ███ ██ ████████ ███████ ███████ ██████ ███ ██████ ██████ ████
The stimulus never suggests that the fact that animals are living things is "irrelevant" to whether they should be accorded rights. It just describes a difficulty with establishing animal rights based only on that premise.