Here are some examples that AI gave me about the fallacy:
The reason I believe in ghosts is that I have seen one.
The law is just because it is the law.
You should trust him because he is trustworthy.
The president is always right because he is the president.
Reading is beneficial because it helps you learn.
To me, 2 & 3 are to-the-point. I have trouble with 1 & 5, they sound like pretty good arguments. 4 seems to be more of an appeal to authority. Are my assessments correct? If not, kindly explain. I’d also appreciate (video) links to real life examples. Thanks!
I don’t know which AI you used, but ChatGPT gives some saner examples: ChatGPT - Begging the Question Examples. It also mostly agrees with your analysis, though it thinks #4 is similar to #2 (both are appeals to some assumed-to-be-intrinsic quality of the subject in question — i.e., laws are inherently just and presidents are inherently correct — but those are the very topics under debate).
I think a statement either has to basically be a rephrasing of its own premise, or at least state two+ connected statements that circle back on each other, to really be an example of this fallacy. The alternative name “circular reasoning” is much clearer, IMHO, both as a succinct description of the actual fallacy and because “beg the question” is too often used in its alternate meaning (to invite an obvious but unstated question, like “you said so-and-so, which begs the obvious question of [blah blah blah related topic]”).
This is an example of begging the question because
The statement assumes that what was seen was a ghost.
However, whether ghosts exist is the point in question.
They would need to give more explanation for why what they saw was a ghost and not some alternative, to avoid that.
“Begging the question” as a name for the fallacy originated as a misleading translation of the Latin petitio principii, which itself was a misleading translation of the Greek τὸ ἐν ἀρχῇ αἰτεῖσθαι or τὸ ἐν ἀρχῇ λαμβάνειν, which means something more like “assuming the original conclusion.”
Why begging the question? Well, petitio (from peto) in this context means “assuming” or “postulating”, but it has other (and older) meanings, from which the notion of logical postulate or assumption arose: “requesting, beseeching”. So rather than use some fancy Latinate term like postulate or assume, people decided to use the plain English word beg[ging] as a sort of calque for the “requesting” sense of petitio. But even in the 16th century, I think, it was a bit odd to warn people against presupposing the end-point of their argument by telling them not to beg their conclusion.
And why begging the question? The OED’s first glosses for question are “A point or topic to be investigated or discussed; a problem, or a matter forming the basis of a problem”, and “A subject or proposal to be debated, decided, or voted on in a meeting or deliberative assembly”. With these meanings, question more or less fits into Aristotle’s warning — it’s wrong to “assume the question”, i.e. to make an argument that presupposes (our conclusion about) the proposal to be decided. But these days, the word question is much more likely to mean “A sentence worded or expressed so as to elicit information from a person; a query, an enquiry.” And in this sense, warning someone not to assume the question either means something quite different (say, not to jump to conclusions about what is being asked), or else it makes no sense at all.
Thanks; now I think I see what the AI was “thinking.” Like the OP, I didn’t think at first it was an example of question-begging, but now I see how it could be, although it needs more context or more unpacking to be a very good example.
I used Poe’s Assistant. Have to agree that ChatGPT is superior, nearer to our reasoning capacity; which means anything earlier than 2025 is probably quite flawed. I also agree that circular reasoning is a much better phrase. Mods - could you help me change the OP title?
Ohh, so that’s the meaning of “the Jewish question”. Are you by chance working in linguistics?
I think that statement alone isn’t enough to conclude that the person has committed a fallacy. One should follow up with “How do you know the one you saw is a ghost?” and listen to their explanation before jumping to conclusion.
Consider this: most people have never witnessed a kangaroo. All we’ve ever seen are pics & videos, and perhaps books. As all of them could be fake, I could say that I don’t believe in kangaroos. And you could retort something like “Dude, stop it. They’re real, I’ve touched one”.
Yes, “The reason I believe in ghosts is that I have seen one.” is not begging the question as the question is not ‘do ghosts exist’, but ‘why do you believe in ghosts’. Seeing a ghost is a perfectly reasonable justification for believing in them. Of course, the underlying question is whether you have actually seen a ghost, but logically this is not a fallacy.
No, it’s the other way around - absent them providing the expanded explanation in their initial answer, their answer remains question-begging.
There’s a different burden of proof between a strange animal and a supernatural phenomenon, but even given that “because I say so” is not absolute proof, no.
Burden of proof shouldn’t apply to “begging the question” and a lot of other logical propositions.
Let’s try another one. Suppose this takes place in the 1700s. “I believe that meteors are rocks falling from space since I found a strange rock on the ground that wasn’t there before right after a meteor shower.”
Other people might choose to not believe that statement, but “begging the question” isn’t a valid counter argument.
“Burden of proof” isn’t quite the right term, maybe. "common axioms everyone agrees on " may be a better sense. In the case of the kangaroo, the axioms are something like “mundane animals exist. Not everyone knows every animal”. Unstated, but that’s what stops it from being suitably analogous to ghosts.
That’s hardly analogous, as there’s a whole chain of causal connection given there. The analogous statement to the OP one would just be "I believe that meteors are rocks falling from space since I found a strange rock on the ground "
I thought the ghost statement was a great example, because it is exactly the sort of thing people actually say. “I trust him because he is trustworthy” is a blatant tautology that most people wouldn’t say, except as sarcasm, or just a joke.
I heard a good description of the process of begging the question as “predicating a conclusion upon its premise.”
A rather complicated example, but as such, the sort of thing that people actually say, was someone once trying to build a sort of syllogism to demonstrate that King Tutankhamen had lost his mother when he was very young:
His mother must have been a particular wife of his father’s who disappears from the historical record when Tut is young. This explains why he was so devoted to his commoner-status nurse, who remained in his life until he was an adult. If he hadn’t lost his mother, his nurse would have left when he was around 2 years old, as was typical.
That one is so long, you lose track of what you started out to prove, but it still boils down to, A=B, therefore, B=A, and that is the essence of begging the question.
At least it was when I took Logic, which was a long time ago. I think it’s still pretty much the same.
I suspected as much, since the English name gives the impression that it’s discussing a different kind of fallacy, one that is often confused with the original, just because of how the fallacy name is phrased:
X: “I propose high-speed rail connecting all Lower 48 states and their major metropolitan centers!”
Y: “That begs the question: how will we pay for all of that?”
In this case “begging the question” means raising at least one concern that the 1st person glossed over, as in a different but related question, not the original premise per se. But as you indicated the etymology for the original fallacy has won out (hence you will inevitably see third party Z chime in with “That’s not what ‘begging the question’ actually means!”).
I don’t understand why this is an example of begging the question. Leaving aside the question of whether the premises are correct (which I have no idea about), why is this not a valid syllogism?
If he hadn’t lost his mother, his nurse would have left when he was around 2 years old
His nurse did not leave when he was around 2 years old
Therefore he lost his mother
You can’t presume both those things, using the first to prove the second, then the second to prove the first. You must independently prove one or the other.
What you are overlooking is that the original issue is which of his father’s wives was Tut’s mother?
This answer begs the questions: the wife who is his mother must be the one who disappears from the record when Tut is little-- this explains why he was so close to his nurse; she was his substitute mother, as his mother died (or maybe moved back to her home country) when Tut was little.
You see? you use her disappearance from Tut’s life to prove that he had a special needs for his nurse, then you use the special needs he had for his nurse to prove that he did not have his mother.
And no, her disappearance from the record is not proof enough-- she would not be the first person to be “erased” after the fact because her people fell out of favor with the hereditary rulers of Egypt.
Tut’s father had something like 9 wives. One was Nefertiti, who seems to have been somehow elevated over the others. One was a woman named Kiya, who, like Nefertiti, came from some other place to Egypt to marry the Pharaoh, probably to seal a treaty or land sale. If the treaty or sale was nullified, she might be returned to her home country. Anyway, Kiya is the one who disappears from the record.
All Tut’s father’s other wives were his sisters, half-sisters, or cousins, except for one who was his own daughter.
And, FWIW, several years subsequent to my reading this bit of question begging, I saw a program where they extracted DNA from one of the mummies of one of his father’s wives who was a relative (but not the one who was his daughter), and she turned out to be Tut’s mother. IIRC, Tut did not share mitochondrial DNA with his father.
I hope I’m not hijacking too much with the ancient Egypt info-- just trying to make everything as clear as possible. But mods can whittle down if need be,
So, if the AI had defined “ghosts” and was explicit about what the person in the example saw, it would no longer be question begging?
Seeing what one takes as evidence for a ghost doesn’t mean that a belief in ghosts is justified, since the evidence would have to be examined and alternate explanations offered, but that’s a long way from question begging.
Ancient Greek writers gave all sorts of descriptions of strange animals that did not exist or were poorly observed real animals. Same burden of proof as supernatural things. That the burden of proof has been met by many of these animals and never met by anything supernatural is not the same thing as there being different burdens.
Not at all. The person in question might be willing to say that they accept that their experience is incorrect, so while they believe in ghosts they are not certain that ghosts actually exist.
It is more or less the same as a hard atheist saying they believe no gods exist while not claiming to know that.
Yes, if there was more to it than just a conclusion-presuming statement like “I saw a ghost”, then it wouldn’t be.
Sure - I said a different burden of proof, not no burden. But if ancient Greek writers included photos and videos of the cryptid, as in longtry’s example, then “I touched one” has already got corroborating evidence. “It’s all fake” in the face of all that is just argumentum ad lapidem
Hard disagree. The key is in the very word “supernatural”. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Adding in facts about what a person might be willing to say is moving the goalposts. The questions were “do ghosts exist” and “why do you believe in ghosts”, no qualifications. Answering in any positive way to the latter is answering “yes” to the former.
“I believe in ghosts” absolutely is the same as asserting “ghosts exist”:
“I believe in ghosts” = “I believe in the existence of ghosts”
“I believe in ghosts” =/= “I believe in the possibility of ghosts”. You seem to think it’s the latter question that was asked, but it was the former.
That’s not a hard atheist. And "more or less’ is weaseling, in any case.
