I think I’ve seen this misuse three times today. Let’s get it straight, people: “Begging the question” is NOT the same as “raising the question.” To beg the question is a term in logic that refers to the error of assuming the truth of what you are trying to prove (as in “Parallel lines never meet because they are parallel”). It is a translation from the Latin petitio principii.
So stop writing crap like “Roses are red. So this begs the question: Are violets blue?”
And all you descriptivists who say that language evolves and this will soon be a proper usage can all bite me.
I’ve noticed that most of the people who use ‘beg the question’ incorrectly are trying to sound smarter than they are to prove some sort of silly point. And they often do, in fact, beg the question. Just not in the way they think.
I think that’s more of an axiom. It is assumed to be true but isn’t proven. Euclidean geometry is challenged on the basis of this axiom and various non-Euclidean geometries are based on the falsity of this phrase.
A tautology is more like a=a. The “truth” of the statement is, in effect, meaningless in that it doesn’t carry in new information.
You have to wonder what the English language will be like in a few generations. I’m learning to speak French because if English is going to evolve this way just because some people are tools who wish to sound smart, I want nothing to do with it…
I think it is high time some sticks were pulled from asses (including my own, as I have picked people up on this myself).
Who the fucking hell are we to tell people that they can’t use a certain arrangement of words to mean exactly what it appears to mean, just because it also happens to be the archaic name of a logical fallacy?
Sorry, a circular argument is a special case of the begged question. the general begged question is one in which the assumption is at least as questionable as the conclusion. Obviously, in a circular argument, the conclusion and the assumption are the same, so they will indeed qualify under the “at least as questionable as” criterion.
You are right, though, that “raise the question” is not always an acceptable substitute. It is appropriate so long as the question raised is one about the assumptions necessary to drive the conclusion.
(I use that particular arrangement of words to mean "We have accepted conventions as to what words mean, and if a precisely defined group of words like beg the question, for which we have no convenient and generally accepted alternative, gets co-opted to mean “raise the question,” then that is one less useful concept people will have in their vocabularies. It is much like the pervasive and infuriating misuse of irony to mean “anything noteworthy in any way.”)
The funny thing is that the “incorrect” usage is far more logical and commonsensical than the “correct” usage.
If you had never heard the term “begging the question” before and had no idea of its meaning would you think that it meant to invite a question (in other words, to draw a conclusion which invites an assumption which needs to be questioned such as “The Smashing Pumpkins kick ass because the Mellan Collie album contains so many great tracks”, a conclusion which “begs” the question “What’s so great about the tracks on that particular album?”) or would you think it meant “to assume the conclusion one is attempting to prove?”
Honestly, which do you think the term “Begging the question” is more suggestive of?
The term “begging the question” is archaic and is generally longer used to signify what it used to. The term has evolved to describe a wholly different logical fallacy, that of simply making unwarrented assumptions/presumptions. The logical fallacy of ‘assuming the conclusion one is attempting to prove’ needs to be given a new name.
I’d be nearer to being swayed if it didn’t need so much explanation as to why the term is so appropriate in describing the logical fallacy.
‘beg’ and ‘raise’ hardly mean or imply the same thing anyway, so I reject the suggestion that the need is entirely met by the phrase “raises the question”.
