PrepTest 23, Section 2, Question 14
Kim: In northern Europe during the eighteenth century a change of attitude occurred that found expression both in the adoption of less solemn and elaborate death rites by the population at large and in a more optimistic view of the human condition as articulated by philosophers. This change can be explained as the result of a dramatic increase in life expectancy that occurred in northern Europe early in the eighteenth century.
Kim: In northern Europe during the eighteenth century a change of attitude occurred that found expression both in the adoption of less solemn and elaborate death rites by the population at large and in a more optimistic view of the human condition as articulated by philosophers. This change can be explained as the result of a dramatic increase in life expectancy that occurred in northern Europe early in the eighteenth century.
Lee: Your explanation seems unlikely, because it could not be correct unless the people of the time were aware that their life expectancy had increased.
Kim: In northern Europe during the eighteenth century a change of attitude occurred that found expression both in the adoption of less solemn and elaborate death rites by the population at large and in a more optimistic view of the human condition as articulated by philosophers. This change can be explained as the result of a dramatic increase in life expectancy that occurred in northern Europe early in the eighteenth century.
Lee: Your explanation seems unlikely, because it could not be correct unless the people of the time were aware that their life expectancy had increased.
Kim: In northern Europe during the eighteenth century a change of attitude occurred that found expression both in the adoption of less solemn and elaborate death rites by the population at large and in a more optimistic view of the human condition as articulated by philosophers. This change can be explained as the result of a dramatic increase in life expectancy that occurred in northern Europe early in the eighteenth century.
Which one of the following, if true, provides the strongest defense of Kim's explanation against Lee's criticism?
An increase in life expectancy in a population often gives rise to economic changes that, in turn, directly influence people's attitudes.
Present-day psychologists have noted that people's attitudes toward life can change in response to information about their life expectancy.
Philosophers in northern Europe during the eighteenth century made many conjectures that did not affect the ideas of the population at large.
The concept of life expectancy is based on statistical theories that had not been developed in the eighteenth century.
Before the eighteenth century the attitudes of northern Europeans were more likely to be determined by religious teaching than by demographic phenomena.
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