I seek an elegant term for argument or technique of rhetoric that takes the form of dismising the question, instead of responding to the argument.
I first assumed that this would be a fallacy of logic; I have looked at various articles, including Wikipedia's list of fallacies, and on several prior E.SE questions, but I'm not finding something that seems to capture this; I don't (yet) think I'm being too picky. :)
I don't think it's exactly any of these somewhat related topics:
- avoiding the question, or shifting issues, or red herring;
- posing different questions, such as Straw-man, or its opposite;
- not quite ad hominem, because the question, not the poser thereof, is being attacked/dismissed.
The two parts, in sum:
- Is there an elegant name for the act of dismissing a question as a rhetorical technique?
- (in terms of its usage) Should that argument be considered logical fallacy?
bib
's "reframing the issue" or the original "dismissing the question."