Some of the following passages contain explanations, some contain arguments, and some may be interpreted as either an argumaent or an explanation. What is your judgment about the chief function of each passage? What would have to be the case for the passage in question to be an argument? To be an explanation? Where you find an argument, identify its premises and conclusion. Where you find an explanation, indicate what is being explained and what the explanation is.

Animals born without traits that led to reproduction died out, whereas the ones that reproduced the most succeeded in conveying their genes to posterity. Crudely speaking, sex feels good because over evolutionary time the animals that liked having sex created more offspring than the animals that didn’t.
—R. Thornhill and C. T. Palmer, “Why Men Rape,”
The Sciences , February 2000