Daniel Dennett on Tools To Transform Our Thinking
Intelligence Squared
How to Answer Rhetorical Questions
We use reductio out absurdum arguments in either expanded or truncated form, but we also imply them all the time using rhetorical questions. When you see one of those question marks in a document, a rhetorical question, try answering the question and see if maybe it's not so ridiculous after all. Sometimes you can really bring a person up short by just answering their rhetorical question. The surely alarm is a sentence that the author wants you to believe, who's putting forward is true. And here the author is putting it in, but not bothering to argue for it. Instead, trying to get by on the cheap with a little nudge, a little surely.
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