No one knows what purpose, if any, dreams serve, although there are a number of hypotheses. According to one hypothesis, dreams are produced when the brain is erasing “parasitic connections” (meaningless, accidental associations between ideas), which accumulate during the day and which would otherwise clog up our memories. Interestingly, the only mammal that does not have rapid eye movement sleep, in which we humans typically have our most vivid dreams, is the spiny anteater, which has been seen as anomalous in that it has a very large brain relative to the animal’s size. This fact provides some confirmation for the parasitic-connection hypothesis since the hypothesis predicts that for an animal that did not dream to have an effective memory that animal would need extra memory space for the parasitic connections.

The reasoning in the argument most closely conforms to which one of the following principles?


(A) Facts about one species of animal can provide confirmation for a hypothesis about all species that are similar in all relevant respects to the particular species in question.

(B) A hypothesis from which several predictions can be drawn as logical conclusions is confirmed only when the majority of these predictions turn out to be true.

(C) A hypothesis about the purpose of an action or object is confirmed when it is shown that the hypothesized purpose is achieved with the help of the action or object and could not be achieved without that action or object.

(D) A hypothesis is partially confirmed whenever a prediction derived from that hypothesis provides an explanation for an otherwise unexplained set of facts.

(E) When several competing hypotheses exist, one of them is confirmed only when it makes a correct prediction that its rivals fail to make.