This content is locked. Please login or become a member.
Heighten Your Sensitivity to Rhetorical Tricks with Daniel C. Dennett, Philosopher, Writer and Cognitive Scientist, and Author, From Bacteria to Bach and Back
The “Surely” Alarm
One of the little tricks of the philosophical trade that I have revealed to my readers is what I call the surely alarm. Every time you see the word, “surely”, a little bell should ring, ding!, because wherever you see surely you’ve found a weak spot in the presentation, the argument, the defense that you’re reading. Why? Because whatever follows the surely is not something that goes without saying, because if it did it wouldn’t have to be said, but also the author is not trying to argue for it, they’re just trying to nudge, nudge get you to accept it with a little reassuring surely. So this is a place which hasn’t been properly examined. There are other tricks of that sort. The surely alarm doesn’t always work. Sometimes the word surely is playing an entirely innocent and appropriate role, but it’s one place to look for unobvious weaknesses in what seems to be the obvious.
“Rather”-ing
Well, another one of the foibles that I discuss is what I call rathering. Very often you’ll have somebody say it’s not the case that blah, blah, blah but rather that da-da, da-da, da-da. And what the author is implying is that there’s only two choices. Well maybe no. Maybe there’s an intermediate choice. Don’t assume that when you see a rather that you’re not being given a false alternative. This is quite common. I collect examples of it. And it’s an extremely popular rhetorical trick and a lot of the people who use rathering don’t think of it as a rhetorical trick because they’re taken in by their own rathering. But rather is another word that you should have a heightened sensitivity to.