I saw this quote in James Clavell’s “Noble House,” and I don’t understand what it means. I’ve noticed people saying a version of it here on the board. Could someone please explain this to me?
It’s what is known as a “loaded question”. It’s phrased with an assumption already in place, with the purpose of causing any simple answer to make the respondant look bad.
If you answer “no” than you must still be beating your wife. If you answer “yes” then you obviously have beaten your wife in the past. It forces you to admit to something that may not be true.
Also known as a complex question, this is one of the logical fallacies.
In the hacker world, the correct answer to that question is `mu.’ Mu says that your question is unanswerable because it is founded on false premises: Namely, that I have ever beaten my wife. It rejects the question unanswered.
Mu is commonly used in semi-Zen contexts.
Also called begging the question. The short answer to the OP is that it’s an underhanded debating technique.
I believe splunge has the same meaning.
Peace.
Clue: Think Python.
Or, in the parlance of Jesse Jackson, “the question is moot.”
As others have noted, this question is the archetypal question that is unfair because it contains an invalid assumption. It’s a ham-fisted debating technique that often goes hand in hand with the simpleminded notion that, in response to a question phrased as a yes or no question, the only valid response is a simple yes or no.
Other examples of the same general type of question are:
“When did you leave the communist party?” (doesn’t demand a yes or no answer, but seems to demand either a date, or the answer I never left) and
“How did you bewitch your neighbor?” (doesn’t demand a yes or no answer, but still makes an assumption that you actually did bewitch your neighbor)
In a legal proceeding (in the US anyway: don’t know how other countries deal with this) this type of question should draw an objection: “assumes facts not in evidence.” Note that this objection is only valid if in fact the question does assume facts that are not in evidence. If the witness had previously admitted that she had been a member of the communist party at one time, then asking her when she left is a valid question.
Because this type of invalid question is fairly well known, sometimes people unfairly accuse the questioner of asking this type of question when in fact the question is perfectly valid, but they don’t want to answer.
I remember seeing footage of a press conference given by Nixon soon before he resigned. In response to some Watergate-related question, Nixon said something like “And I suppose next you’re going to ask me if I’ve stopped beating my wife yet?” (anybody else remember this?)
Constantine
Begging the question is slightly different. Begging the question is a logical fallacy where the argument assumes as a premise the thing it is trying to prove–a circular argument.
The question in the OP indeed has an assumption, but the question is not an argument, it is a question intended to back the respondant into a corner. Blalron provided the correct term for this technique.
I’ll stop beating her when she wises up, thank you very much!
Another example of a loaded question:
In elementary school, before the era of political correctness, we used to tease each other and ask, “Have you told your mom you’re gay yet?”
The proper response is " The question is moo. Like a cow’s opinion. Its doesn’t matter."
I see this a lot but only on these boards have I heard it stressed so. A begged question is one in which the assumptions made are no less questionable than the conclusion they are meant to support… it literally “begs the question” of supporting those, then. Of course, a circular argument has the same assumptions as it does conclusions, so it is indeed a special case of the begged question.
Begged question:
person 1: Z.
person 2: why Z?
person 1: Y, and Y implies Z.
person 2: But that begs the question: why Y?
infidels.org gives such an explanation.
There’s two slightly different meanings to “begging the question.” Properly, begging the question refers to a circular argument. More commonly, however, it is used to mean a question that is based on equally questionable assumptions.
As for the OP, The correct repsonse is to deny the premise. And then throw in a question like, “What makes you think that I did?” to put your disingenuous opponent on the defensive.
Or, just to turn the question on its head, “Why are you projecting?”
You can answer simply, “I have never beaten my wife.”
Courts where you can only answer “Yes” or “No”? Television maybe, not real life.
You can also answer simply, “no,” which is the logically correct answer if you’ve never beaten your wife (and thus have never stopped beating her), but that puts a lot of faith in the jury realizing what conclusions they can and can’t draw from that.
Hahaha…Not to hijack this thread or nuthin’ but no matter how much of a greasy slimeball Jesse may or may not be, I love the guy just based on that SNL skit, and when they replaced all the control room workers with black people who didn’t know what they were doing because Jesse was there, or when he read from “the book of Suess”…Jesse can’t be THAT bad of a guy. < /hijack>
Jon
Have I stopped beating my wife? Nope, I still play chess better than she does.