Re: noodling request: Faustian bargains

Jonathan L Cunningham <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Zeborah <zeborah@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I don't want to talk about exactly what constitutes informed consent.
That's not my area of expertise nor was it ever my point. But the fact
that it's a complicated thing doesn't negate my point, which was merely
that body illness and mental illness are ethically and morally
equivalent; and it particularly doesn't negate my refutation of your
belief/feeling that "messing with someone's brain chemistry is a Bad
Thing".

<nitpick>
I object to your claim that you have refuted my point. You have denied
it, argued against it, objected to it, disagreed with it. All those I
would accept. You have not, IMO, refuted it.
</nitpick>

I react even more strongly when a politician, accused of some
misdemeanor, say, "I refute that absolutely."

"No!" I say to those politicians. "You haven't! Your denial is not a
refutation. A refutation requires proof."

In a matter of opinion (which this is) I'm not even sure that a
refutation is possible.

How in hell is it a matter of opinion that a lot of people who suffered
before messing with their brain chemistry, aka taking fluoxetine and
other medicines, have led and do lead vastly improved lives after? Or
do you argue that such a change in quality of life is a Bad Thing? Or
do you argue that even though those people have had such a vast
improvement in quality of life it's still somehow a Bad Thing to take
the medicines? If so, in what way precisely is it a Bad Thing?

The reason it's a nitpick, is that the language (mangled by politicians)
seems to be changing, and "refute" seems to be weakening to "deny".

My dictionary (Apple's inbuilt application, based on the Oxford American
Dictionary) says "In the second half of the 20th century, a more general
sense of refute developed from the core one, meaning simply 'deny': | I
absolutely refute the charges made against me. Traditionalists object to
the second use on the grounds that it is an unacceptable degradation of
the language, but it is now widely accepted in standard English."

Which may not convince you but it's a relief to me that I'm not
completely ignorant.

OTOH, I don't think I mean it as weak as "deny"; that suggests nothing
more than "No it's not," whereas I have provided reasons and a chain of
logic for my argument.

But
what new word can we find, which has the stronger meaning?

I've no idea. How about an old word: "disprove"? (The thesaurus of
the same application also suggests "prove wrong, prove false, debunk,
discredit, invalidate; informal poke holes in; formal confute" but
'disprove' seems most general.)

Zeborah
--
Gravity is no joke.
http://www.geocities.com/zeborahnz/
rasfc FAQ: http://www.lshelby.com/rasfcFAQ.html
.

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