Definition:
(1) Foreseeing and forestalling objections to an argument.
(2) Figurative device by which a future event is presumed to have already occurred.
Adjective: proleptic.
Etymology:
From the Greek, "preconception, anticipation"Examples:
- "In 1963, Nobel Prize-winning economist William Vickrey suggested that [automobile] insurance be included in the purchase of tires. Anticipating the objection that this might lead people to drive on bald tires, Vickrey said drivers should get credit for the remaining tread when they turn in a tire. Andrew Tobias proposed a variation on this scheme in which insurance would be included in the price of gasoline. That would have the added benefit of solving the problem of uninsured motorists (roughly 28% of California drivers). As Tobias points out, you can drive a car without insurance, but you can't drive it without gasoline."
(Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff, "Would You Buy Car Insurance by the Mile?" Forbes, 2005) - "In the ancient art of rhetoric, prolepsis stood for the anticipation of possible objections to a speech. This anticipation enabled the speaker to provide answers to objections before anyone had the chance to even raise them. In other words, the speaker takes the role/attitude of the listener while preparing or delivering his speech, and he tries to assess in advance what possible objections could be raised."
(A. C. Zijderveld, On Clichés: The Supersedure of Meaning by Function in Modernity, Routledge, 1979) - Michael Moore continues his book Dude, Where's My Country? with a dream he had one night which took him several years into the future. It is a time when the world has run out of oil and the wars started by Bush have brought an end to America as we know it. Moore is having a conversation with his granddaughter, who wants to know how Americans could have been so blind to the truth and so wasteful.
Pronunciation: pro-LEP-sis
