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no reasonable person would agree that it's correct to call a gunshot wound "circulatory failure" because that's not what society has agreed that those words mea
by habnds 7y ago
no reasonable person would agree that it's correct to call a gunshot wound "circulatory failure" because that's not what society has agreed that those words mean. You can decide personally that they mean something different, but you would be wrong. Language is determined socially not personally.
- matz1 7y agoAnd how does it become the "society" ? It starts from the individual.
- habnds 7y agoyes sure, you could individually start a movement to redefine the meaning of a word, Frindle-style, but here, today, in our society, the words "respiratory failure" do not mean the same thing as "poisoned by air pollution".
- matz1 7y agoWell at least to me, the author and to some society, both are technically fact and both are technically correct.
- Fezzik 7y agoIn this example, though, we are looking for actionable items. But for the pollution, it appears this girl would have not had respiratory failure. Reducing pollution is the actionable item for addressing the respiratory related illness in this story, and thus the focal point. Writing an article about this person and not mentioning pollution, and writing only about respiratoy failure, would have been utterly pointless. Edit, to add: just because something is true does not make it relevant. It is true that if this woman never would have been born she would not have had respiratory failure caused by pollution and this article never would have been written... but how is stating that helpful?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]