Good evenin’ all! This is the third installment of this series examining various logical fallacies and providing a few examples. All this is intended to help folks recognize when debating a point when the other side is using a logical fallacy (either through sloppy reasoning, or through a deliberate attempt at scoring points or attempting to derail or reframe the argument on different terms). It will also help folks look at their OWN thinking, and hopefully recognize if they are falling prey to using a logical fallacy themselves.
Previous installments of this series can be found here:
Logical Fallacies Bootcamp: The Strawman
Logical Fallacies Bootcamp: The Slippery Slope
And now, let’s take a look at a misunderstood logical fallacy: Begging the Question.
People often misuse the phrase “begging the question” or “it begs the question,” usually meaning instead that it RAISES the question and this clouds understanding of what it is. The actual “begging the question” is a different animal than just a statement or question that leads to another question. And the word “begging” in this instance has nothing to do with pleading or making supplication.
Let’s start with a bit of history, which explains the origin of the rather odd name of this particular fallacy. The philosophical origins of this fallacy begin with Aristotle, who as part of his examination of circular reasoning also contemplated the idea of a question that assumed its own answer.
The Ancient Romans would later describe this idea in their ancient Latin as “petitio principii,” which originally was intended to be understood by the learned as “assuming the initial point,” but later Medieval scholars misinterpreted the phrase as meaning “begging the question” and applied that term to the concept (in fact, if you plug “petitio principii” into Google Translate, Google will give the translation of “begging”).
So there we have the origin of the term — basically a bad medieval translation of an ancient Latin term applied to a concept developed by Aristotle.
Now, moving on to the actual fallacy…
Begging the question is, at it’s simplest, a circular argument or statement where a person makes statements or arguments that assume their position is correct. To put it another way, begging the question is when a claim is made but one must accept the premise to be true in the first place for the claim to be true.
Basically, it is to argue “A is true because A is true.” It can get more complex than that (“A is true because B is true because C is true because A is true”) so sometimes this one can be tricky to suss out.
If that’s not clear, let’s look at some examples:
A classic one is “God exists because the Bible says so, and the Bible is the Word of God.”
That one probably doesn’t require a lot of elaboration, as the circular nature of the statement is pretty obvious.
“Abortion is wrong because killing people is immoral.”
The above example presumes as a given truth that 1) an unborn fetus is a person, and 2) killing a person is always immoral. In order to really argue the position, both of those issues need to be addressed (such as “is a fetus really a “person” and if so, at what point in a pregnancy is that the case”, and “if so, what about to protect the health or life of the mother,” to give some examples).
“Everyone wants the new Playstation because it’s the hottest selling game system on the market right now!”
This falls under Begging the Question because it doesn’t really provide an argument making the case, instead it more or less boils down to “the new Playstation is popular because the new Playstation is popular!” without provide a rationale behind that popularity. For example, there could be other explanations why it’s the “hottest selling game system.” Maybe a couple shipping containers of the new Xboxes fell off a ship in a storm caused a shortage of competing game systems, for example.
One thing to remember with Begging the Question is there doesn’t have to be a question posed, despite the name. It can simply be a statement made in a way that assumes its own truth.
Let’s throw out a final one…
“People are intrinsically good, so therefore society should have few or no laws and rules because without legal and societal restrictions, people will do good things.”
The flaw here should be obvious. The statement assumes that “People are good, so therefore left to their own devices with no restrictions, they will do good things.” This statement hinges on assuming that people are inherently good to be true (despite a lot of evidence to the contrary in the world), and yet this is not an uncommon argument in libertarian circles.
Begging the Question can be a tricky one, especially given that people so frequently misuse the phrase. But hopefully now that you know the origin of the term, what it is, and have a few examples, you’ll have a better chance at spotting such statements. And you’ll avoid using “it begs the question” when you really mean “it raises the question!”
Parents everywhere, falling into logical fallacy traps.