I searched here for an answer to my question but didn’t find a satisfactory answer. So I went to wikipedia and did get an answer, but my poor 66 y/o brain needs simplicity. Aristotle was not simple ;).
What does “begs the question” mean? I hear and read the phrase a lot, so often in fact that I assume it’s being much over (and incorrectly) used.
So please tell me, at a 1970s junior college level, how the phrase should be used correctly. A couple examples of actually begging the question would be nice.
Peace,
mangeorge
BTW; I do know what an idiom is. 
The Nizkor Project has good explanations (including examples) of logical fallacies.
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/begging-the-question.html
It’s simple, really. It uses “assume I’m right” to support the conclusion of the argument. A person asserts “P” and then uses that as proof. Such as:
Cecil Adams is never wrong. How do I know? He told me. And he’s never wrong.
A proper syllogism has premises like “All men are mortal” and “Socrates is a man” and uses them to answer the question “Is Socrates mortal” - begging the question is an argument that sneaks the answer into the premises - it’s therefore a kind of circular reasoning where you start by assuming the statement that you are trying to prove is correct, and use that premise to “prove” that it is indeed correct.
A friend of mine always did that in college - he would write in a paper “The philosopher So-and-so argued that people are inherently evil; since people are inherently good, So-and-so was wrong.” - the statement that people are inherently good amounts to nothing more than “So-and-so was wrong” so my friend was “begging the question” - asking that his answer to the question be assumed from the start.
Those sound like ‘circular reasoning’ to me. Is ‘begging the question’ ‘circular reasoning’?
Here’s how I think of it:
‘If we reduce taxes for the rich, the economy will prosper because more money would be invested in business.’
But that begs the question of whether a consumer-based economy really is better helped by the assumed investments made possible by lower taxes for the rich, or whether it is better helped by consumer spending.
Not to start a debate; just the first thing that came to mind.
Yes.
Yes, the terms are synonymous.
That’s not really question begging. It’s just an unstated premise. That is, it assumes a fact that is not part of the premise, namely that investments are better than consumer spending.
If you want to use the the phrase in its “proper,” prescriptive way, you don’t really say it “begs the question of” or it “begs the question that” anything. You just say that it begs the question. Or that the person is engaging in question begging.
It is important to note that such a high percentage of people use this phrase “incorrectly” to mean prompting a question that such a usage has essentially become the accepted meaning of the term.
Yes, its original meaning was “circular reasoning.”
But the reason you’ve been hearing the phrase a lot is that in the last few years a second meaning has been introduced. For some reason, some people use “begs the question” when what they really mean is “raises the question,” an entirely different meaning. For example, “John Smith lives a lavish lifestyle, in spite of the fact that he never works. It begs the question of where his money comes from.” In the past, this phrase would have been “raises the question.” I don’t know why people began to use “begs the question” in this context, but the practice has caught on, and is likely to be considered “standard English” by now.
The second meaning mentioned above is pretty much the only way the phrase is used in the media. I don’t think I’ve seen “begging the question” used properly to describe a logical fallacy outside of a logic textbook.
Johnny L.A. even used “begs the question” to mean “raises the question” in his post above.
I am aware that “begging the question” is supposed to designate the logical fallacy described herein, but how did it get this name? Why “begging”, and why “question”?
That’s what caught my attention, and it’s why I raised this question. I guess there’s no way to make it stop. From now on I going to say “Bullshit, it’s no such thing.”
Peace,
mangeorge
BTW; John McLaughlin’s doing both right now on his “One on One”.
Why are his guests so nice to him? 
They’re discussing the book The View From The Center Of The Universe.
Oh yeah, what ever happened to “Pretzel logic”? Not the song.
Oh I have, but I watch PBS and live in Berkeley. 
Bad choice of words in the translation. A better translation would be “assumes the point.” But there you have it. BTW, the use of it to mean “raises the question” is not recent. I found a reference from the early 20th century in Google News Archives.
Wikipedia says: “Circular reasoning is different from the informal logical fallacy “begging the question”, as it is fallacious due to a flawed logical structure and not the individual falsity of an unstated hidden co-premise as begging the question is.”
Not sure what you guys will make of that and agree/disagree, but I remember learning the two as separate fallacies way back.
Precisely. Some dumb translator did a calque (overly-literal word-for-word translation) instead of engaging his brain when he had to translate petitio principii from Latin into English. ‘Circular logic’ or ‘circular reasoning’ is a much better translation, as it actually gives an indication of what the fallacy is.
What I meant was that someone makes a proposition on the assumption that ‘A’ is true. That is, ‘This course of action is correct because “A” is correct, and “A” is correct because the course of action is correct.’ Now that I write it that way, I see that it is circular reasoning.
The way I’ve thought about the phrase being used incorrectly is this: Assumption ‘A’ is correct. Therefore, proposition ‘B’ is correct. But that leads to a further question ‘C’; not whether ‘A’ is correct.
Since corn is the most effective way of producing sugar, help me find ways to produce more corn. I want to get rich, because having sugar is the fastest way to raise money.
Isn’t this a great example of 'begging the question" ?
I think the easiest way to understand what begging the question means is to think of one of the classic objections in courtroom dramas: “Assumes facts not in evidence.”
“to beg” means to sidestep, avoid, or dodge. “the question” is the interlocutors’ “Why do you think that?” or “How so?” as in:
“Cecil never lies.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because he said so, and he never lies.”
The second response is where the fallacy occurs. It dodges the challenge “Why do you think that?” by restating the line that came before it. Dodging the challenge = begging the question.