Title says it all really. I think there is a Latin term (or maybe Greek or something) for what I’m looking for, but I’m not sure.
It’s something that’s an unquestioned “given”; something assumed to be true from which we can proceed to do proofs or draw conclusions.
The context is, “Person X has never been under scrutiny for Y problem, because it was taken as a _______[ from the beginning] that the problem does not exist for him/her”
(Want a more formal, precise word than “given”)
Maybe I’m hallucinating that there even is such a word. But if there is I’m confident a Doper will know it.
Although it is a related idea, a priori does not really mean “given”, it means capable of being known for certain beforehand, before any evidence is gathered. If something is known a priori, it can’t possibly be wrong, no matter what new empirical evidence might be discovered. (An example might be 1 + 1 = 2. We can be confident that no evidence is going to be discovered to disprove that.) Describing something as “taken as a given,” by contrast, usually means that although it has been taken to be true, it actually might not be. It looks as though that meaning is what you are after. “A priori” will not make much sense, or convey the meaning you want, in your example sentence (not even if you change things around a bit).
You could say “Person X has never been under scrutiny for Y problem, because it was taken as a datum that the problem does not exist for him/her.” That is technically correct, but sounds very stilted, and invites misunderstanding. “Taken as axiomatic” is better, but if it were me I would just use “given”. It is perfectly good formal English, and it conveys your intended meaning clearly and concisely.
Another word for this concept is postulate. The postulates of an argument are those things that are assumed true; if you accept the postulates, you have to either challenge the logic or accept the conclusion.
And “Person X has never been under scrutiny for Y problem, because it was taken as a premise that the problem does not exist for him/her” is a perfectly cromulent sentence, TYVM.
Look at that :dubious:
Now it may not have been exactly what the OP intended, but it fits perfectly well with what the OP actually asked, given that the OP wasn’t certain it was Latin or Greek, and wasn’t suggested in the subsequent thread, AFAICT.
That’s the word I came up with as well. I have no idea what language the word is, but in math, that’s the word we use to mean ‘given’ as in, ‘here’s a set of axioms…you can’t change these rules, period.’
ETA, ‘given’ makes more sense in your sentence (the OP). I can see saying that it’s a given that problem doesn’t exist for someone, but not an axiom. I know math proofs don’t always hold up to day to day life/gossip, but ISTM the axiom would be the first part of the sentence and you would use that to prove the second part. But axiomatic still sounds nice.