Word: questions
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...check the operation of a vague generality under fire, take the typical example, “Hume brought empiricism to its logical extreme.” The question is asked, “Did the philosophical beliefs of Hume represent the spirit of the age in which he lived?” Our hero replies by opening his essay with, “David Hume, the great Scottish philosopher, brought empiricism to its logical extreme. If these be the spirit of the age in which he lived, then he was representative of it.” This generality expert...
...artful equivocation is an almost impossible concept to explain, but it is easy to demonstrate. Let us begin with the question, “Did the philosophical beliefs of Hume represent the spirit of the age in which he lived...
...Others, however, strongly support Hume’s greatness on the ground that the force of his personality definitely affected the age in which he lived. It is not a question of the cart before the horse in either case, merely a problem of which came first, the chicken or the egg. In any case, there is much to be said on both sides...
Just exactly what the equivocator’s answer has to do with the actual question is hard to say. The equivocator writes an essay about the point, but never on it. Consequently, the grader often mentally assumes that the right answer is known by the equivocator and marks the essay as an extension of the point rather than a complete irrelevance. The artful equivocation must imply the writer knows the right answer, but it must never be definite enough to eliminate any possibilities...
...long run the expert in the use of unwarranted assumption comes off better than the equivocator. He would deal with our question on Hume not by baffling the grader or by fencing him but like this: “It is absurd to discuss whether Hume is representative of the age in which he lived unless we note the progress of that age on all fronts. After all, Hume did not live in a vacuum...