

Beg the question - atuladhar
http://begthequestion.info/

======
_delirium
I'm not sure this phrase is actually worth using in any guise, especially
given that the people using the "correct" meaning are often not using the even
more pedantic correct meaning. Many logic books today use "beg the question"
as synonymous with "circular reasoning" (some equate them explicitly), but
there traditionally were subtle differences. Aristotle and medieval logicians
considered circular reasoning to be a formal fallacy, presenting what appears
to be a syllogism but is actually not a valid one. But they considered begging
the question to be more of an informal fallacy, where an arguer has relied on
assumptions that would be unreasonably large to grant, or are too similar to
the conclusions, for the argument as a whole to be considered a legitimate or
interesting demonstration of the point.

In medieval debating, it was sort of an out-of-bounds request more than a
fallacy. The difference between on the one hand, putting forth a chain of
reasoning that is explicitly circular (and thus fallacious), and on the other
hand, asking your opponent to concede a point that, perhaps non-obviously,
turns out to be equivalent to what you were arguing for, or at least, more
subjectively, concedes too much of the way to your goal. That's not
_fallacious_ , because if they concede the point directly, or concede
something that amounts to 80% of your point, your conclusion might correctly
follow from it, and you have a proper syllogism, where you start with
assumptions that all sides agreed on, and through valid reasoning arrive at
your result. But it's in some sense cheating at debate, because you've tricked
them into conceding the point, rather than having demonstrated the point.

(One reason it's subjective and informal is that you're effectively saying
that demonstrating B from A is unreasonable, because A already contains too
much of B, such that anyone who granted assumption A would in effect have
already granted conclusion B, making the argument pointless. But in a strict
sense, that's always true with any argument: anyone who grants any set of
assumptions is always implicitly granting all conclusions that follow from
those assumptions. So what counts as an unreasonable assumption that gives
away too much of the conclusion is an outside-of-logic issue.)

For any of these meanings, I personally avoid the phrase. If you want the
formal circular-reasoning fallacy, you can just say "circular reasoning", and
if you want "raises the question", you can say that, or something similar. If
you want the meaning I've described above, it's a bit trickier, but you
probably will have to explain it anyway using more words, since it's the least
common of the three meanings today (but maybe "circular reasoning" will work
for that meaning too, in an informal sense of not being strictly circular, but
maybe morally equivalent to a circular argument).

~~~
philwelch
It's still used this way by contemporary philosophers, though oddly I've
mostly seen it used in an adjectival form--"this argument is question-
begging".

It's good practice in philosophy, because philosophers are trying to start
from one (preferably obvious and uncontroversial) set of assumptions and
derive their way to a (preferably astonishing and counterintuitive)
conclusion. Starting from a cleverly worded re-statement of something your
conclusion trivially follows from and ending up at your conclusion isn't very
useful to philosophers.

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bobbyi
Just because an obscure idiomatic usage exists doesn't make it incorrect to
use the words literally.

If cats and dogs were falling out of the sky, I could correctly say that it's
raining cats and dogs.

Some situations beg for a certain question to be asked.

~~~
samps
This is a little pedantic, but "begs the question" doesn't really mean "raises
the question" even literally. It sounds weird to say that someone "begs a
rebuke" when they really deserve a rebuke. Even more literally, you don't say
that someone on the street "begs a dollar" -- they beg _for_ a dollar. Just as
you said, some situations _beg for_ those questions to be asked (or perhaps
they _beg that_ they be asked); they don't simply _beg_ them.

~~~
teaspoon
Not quite true. "I beg your pardon" and "I begged her forgiveness" are
standard English.

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sounddust
One of the meanings of the word "beg" has disappeared over time, and the
meaning of "question" has evolved as well; as a result, the meaning of the
phrase "beg the question" is evolving to more closely fit the currently
understood definitions of those two words. It's amusing that none of the
prescriptivists criticizing people for misusing this phrase seem to argue that
we should be actively start using the second meaning of beg again, nor do they
ever use it themselves.

For a much more comprehensive and interesting analysis of this topic, I'd
recommend languagelog's article:
(<http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2290>). I agree with his conclusion;
it's futile to force people to understand the traditional meaning of this
phrase, and it would be preferable for the phrase itself to evolve to use
words that are currently in use and unambiguous ("assuming the conclusion" and
"raising the question," for example)

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mcknz
A noble effort, but "begging the question" is destined to go the way of split
infinitives....

~~~
lmkg
I agree with what you meant to say, but in truth, split infinitives are
historically good and proper English. It was a prescriptive desire to make
English more like Latin that led to the taboo against split infinitives (and
ending sentences with prepositions), which is about as counter-idiomatic as
formating Lisp parens according to K&R.

~~~
mcknz
[1] <http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/14636>

Then I suppose the complaint against split infinitives is really just an
attempt to prescribe against awkward phrasing. Those crazy Victorians.

------
JacobAldridge
Now this is change I can believe in.

And once we've sorted the 'Begs the Question' usage, let's tackle the media
with an 'Enormity does not mean Enormous' campaign (Enormity = Great Evil, not
Large) and then train sports journalists to pronounce conjure the way it's
meant to be pronounced (kun not kon).

It's a losing battle in a language as beautifully fluid as English, but if I
stand for nothing I will fall 4 N-E-Ting.

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run4yourlives
Unfortunately, regardless of whether you are right or wrong, the English
language is the rule of the masses.

That is why you are crushed.

If thou hast concern; shall be perplexed withe the change of lang-uage, read
thise and acknolege.

(olde English for illustrative purposes only, god knows if it is accurate. )

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julius_geezer
It does not beg but it does demand the question, Why should I care that much?

I've essentially given up on "problematic" and "actionable"...

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atuladhar
This error has always bothered me and I don't really know why. I was reminded
of the site when I noticed it on Nathan Marz's latest blog post (discussed at
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1650051>).

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mcknz
I'm very disinterested in this topic.

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klochner
one of my pet peeves . . .

    
    
       http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1603891
       http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1603799

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Qz
_This is why we fight._

I love it.

