Okay, so just to check my understanding here.

If we take the statement: "All dogs go to heaven. Victor is a dog; therefore, Victor will go to heaven." Assuming we look at this from secular point of view, the statement "all dogs go to heaven" is false because heaven doesn't exist; however, the argument that "Victor will go to heaven" is valid regardless of whether the reader is religious or not because, with regards to determining the validity of an argument, we are assuming that all dogs will go to heaven.

I guess the same thing would apply to "Victor is a dog"? Even if we know that Victor is actually a guinea pig, which would render this premise false, the argument is still technically valid based on what's provided to us because we HAVE to accept both premises as true. #help

I'm a bit lost with regard to how the stimulus is able to support AC A in Q17. The final sentence of the second paragraph specifically seems to guard against picking A as an answer choice as it talks about how the negative effect of the ice ages on speciation in temperate regions is less than previously theorized and how arctic conditions (which understood to include rates of speciation) were actually unaffected by such ice ages.

A seems to be based on the implication that:

Ice age = negative pressure on speciation,

But that is immediately contrasted in the paragraph referencing the time theory.

#feedback

What messed me up with this question was that I feel like E was pretty much a big nothing-burger in terms of what it added/took away from the argument. So what if stimulation is also beneficial as well to a child's development?

It feels like, for E to actually weaken the argument any appreciable amount, you have to inject an external value judgement into the stimulus with regard to the relative value of the intellectual development of stimulation vs the value you get from the development afforded to the child by extra sleep. And, AFAIK, answers that require you to inject some sort of outside assumption/value judgement have traditionally been pretty answers.

#help

WTF is that question stem lol