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.
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.