Just as you should keep a sharp eye out for “surely,” you should develop a sensitivity for rhetorical questions in any argument or polemic. Why? Because, like the use of “surely,” they represent an author’s eagerness to take a short cut. A rhetorical question has a question mark at the end, but it is not meant to be answered. Whenever you see a rhetorical question, try—silently, to yourself—to give it
an unobvious answer.
Source:
Philosopher Daniel Dennett’s Book Intuition Pumps
