Critical Reasoning

received a pm.

prompt says: (emphasis mine)

YellowSapphire wrote:Paolo's and Tajudeen"s statements lend the most support to the claim that they disagree about which one of the following statements?

in other words, you have to find a statement with which one of these people would agree, but with which the other person would disagree.

i think that most of the difficulty here is actually coming from a language barrier; the people who wrote this question clearly didn't write it with non-native speakers of english in mind.
specifically:
the people are supposed to "disagree ABOUT the statement".
disagreeing ABOUT something is not the same as disagreeing WITH something.
-- if 2 people disagree ABOUT something, that means that those two people oppose each other's opinion about that thing.
-- if someone disagrees WITH something, that means that this person opposes that thing itself.

those posters who are selecting choice (d) are probably misreading "disagree about", in the question, as "disagree with". if the problem were the latter of these, then choice (d) of would make perfect sense; unfortunately, it's not.

QUICK TEST OF YOUR UNDERSTANDING:
saying that one person disagrees WITH with some statement is perfectly logical.
however,
saying that one person disagrees ABOUT some statement doesn't make any sense, unless that person has serious psychological issues.
<-- see whether you can explain what i mean here. if you can, then you've got a sufficient understanding of the difference between these idioms.

explanation in next post.

A: Eccentric humans were considered socially undesirable during the European Renaissance.

this point is not addressed by tajudeen.

B: Oceans have always been viewed as mysterious and unpredictable.

not addressed by paolo.

C: The linkage between oceans and eccentricity explains the European Renaissance customs of using ships as asylums.

not addressed by tajudeen.
paolo would disagree with this statement; the causation is the reverse of what paolo states.

D: People have never attributed the same qualities to oceans and eccentrics.

BOTH speakers would disagree WITH this statement.
ironically, this means that the speakers AGREE ABOUT the statement.

hope that helps.

for what it's worth, i think that the official problems will be more explicit about this sort of thing.

E: The linkage between oceans and eccentricity predates the European Renaissance.

paolo would disagree, since he's citing a renaissance practice as the putative cause of this link.
tajudeen would agree, since tajudeen uses the word "always".
there's your answer.