It just wasn’t an argument at all or a rhetorical device of any kind. It was a redundant aside setting up a counterfactual problem. At worst it was a waste of a sentence and at best it made the counterfactual accessible to even those people without a suitably sophisticated reductionist philosophy.
(And, obviously, there was an implication that the initial ‘huh?’ verged on disingenuous.)
At worst it was a waste of a sentence and at best it made the counterfactual accessible to even those people without a suitably sophisticated reductionist philosophy.
Rhetorical device in exactly this sense: it communicates where just stating the intended meaning won’t work (“people without a suitably sophisticated reductionist philosophy”). The problem is insignificant (but still present), and as a rhetorical device it could do some good.
It just wasn’t an argument at all or a rhetorical device of any kind. It was a redundant aside setting up a counterfactual problem. At worst it was a waste of a sentence and at best it made the counterfactual accessible to even those people without a suitably sophisticated reductionist philosophy.
(And, obviously, there was an implication that the initial ‘huh?’ verged on disingenuous.)
Rhetorical device in exactly this sense: it communicates where just stating the intended meaning won’t work (“people without a suitably sophisticated reductionist philosophy”). The problem is insignificant (but still present), and as a rhetorical device it could do some good.