Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
Changed line(s) 1,47 (click to see context) from:
!!! Also called:
* Petitio principii (Latin: "pursuit/attack of the source")
Also called "Circular Reasoning," begging the question is "proving" that something is true by taking your conclusion as one of your premises, usually done implicitly rather than explicitly. Few people are fooled by [[CircularReasoning having your conclusion as your only premise]], as in "Joe is mad at Jill, therefore Joe is mad at Jill." In rhetoric, such arguments are called ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_%28rhetoric%29 tautologies]]'', and they're essentially [[MeaninglessMeaningfulWords a pretty but meaningless]] way of saying [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment the same thing twice]]. Therefore an argument which is begging the question often isn't obvious, even to the one making it. A premise may be substantially identical to or assume the truth of its conclusion, but be concealed by using different vocabulary, phrasing, sentence structure, or go unstated entirely.
Logic, meanwhile, has its own form of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_%28logic%29 tautology]]: a statement or chain of statements which are [[SoundValidTrue sound, valid, and true]] under any condition.[[note]]"[[Administrivia/NotASubversion A trope is either subverted or not subverted.]]"[[/note]] Begging the question is what happens when you confuse the two.
Put broadly, this fallacy applies to any argument where one or more premises are at least as contentious as the conclusion itself, and for the same reasons, such as:
--> Alice says she is honest.\\
If an honest person says something, it must be true.\\
Therefore Alice is an honest person, because an honest person says so.
An example where the fallacy is more hidden might go something like this:
--> The relationship between capitalists and laborers can only be exploitative, and mutually beneficial coexistence between them is impossible. Therefore, the path of historical development inevitably leads to socialist revolution.
In this example, both the premise and conclusion are based on Marxist ideology. If one were to accept one, by definition one already accepts the other. In other words it is not an "argument" at all, but merely a statement that says, "I am a Marxist."
Note that begging the question in arguments can be perfectly [[SoundValidTrue valid]], logically speaking. However they are not considered convincing because they do not prove anything other than what was already assumed.
"Begging the question" is often used colloquially to mean "raising the question". (Example: "With the rise of online media, this begs the question: do public libraries have a future?") This usage is a common BerserkButton for academics aware of the original meaning. It doesn't help that the original phrase was first translated from Greek into Latin, and from Latin into English, resulting in the confusing phrase, "Begging the question," which is incomprehensible to English speakers (there being no begging nor question involved) unless one already knows the dialectical context.
See also NoTrueScotsman. If both parties accuse each other of begging the question, then it's a philosophical impasse -- no one can agree on a common set of premises; compare ValuesDissonance. See also TautologicalTemplar, who believes that since they are good, everything they do is justified as good.
!!Examples:
[[AC:{{Comics}}]]
* A classic Bill Mauldin political cartoon from the early 1960s features an American soldier standing in a field of large cartoon mushrooms, a reference to the conical hats worn by Asian field workers and guerrillas, explaining to a comrade the challenge of ground combat in Vietnam: "You got your mushrooms and your toadstools. The mushrooms are harmless, the toadstools will kill you. You'll know it's a toadstool if it kills you."[[note]]A mycologist would call shenanigans on this, pointing out that there are no toadstools, there are only poisonous (and harmless) mushrooms.[[/note]]
[[AC: Literature]]
* The ''Literature/{{Discworld}} Companion'' entry for the Ephebian philosopher Expletius says that while he proved the Disc was 10,000 miles in diameter, ''all'' philosophers had their own "proof" of the Disc's size giving wildly different numbers, but "they turned out to be wrong". With ''how'' it "turned out" they were wrong carefully elided, the suggestion is we're taking the ''actual'' diameter of the Disc as Expletius stated. In other words: they are wrong because he is right.
** The [[RealLife Roundworld]] inspiration for this is mentioned in ''Literature/TheScienceOfDiscworld'': Eratosthenes proved the circumference of the Earth was 252,000 stadia. This is very accurate, assuming you use the right kind of stadium (there were several different measurements of that name). How do we know which one he used? Well, nowadays we ''do'' know the circumference of the Earth. So if that's 252,000 stadia, then...
* ''Literature/{{Temeraire}}'': One character argues that dragons [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman aren't sapient]] because, since only humans can be sapient, all signs of sapience in dragons -- being able to speak, possessing reason, building relationships with humans, and so on -- are actually evidence that they're well-trained animals.
[[AC:{{Video Games}}]]
* You can weaponize this against President Eden in ''VideoGame/Fallout3'', assuming your character has sufficient Intelligence to make the argument. President Eden believes himself to be infallible. Ask him why, and he'll say because he was always told that he was, since the moment he was born. Your character can then counter by pointing out that this is circular logic, and that his argument boils down to "An infallible person is always right. I am an infallible person, because an infallible person says so (who is me)." This sends Eden into a LogicBomb where he realizes that there's nothing in his argument that isn't being proven by itself.
* In ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'', accepting the red text as only speaking the truth requires you believe both that Beatrice is being honest and that the red text speaks only the truth when statements like "The red text speaks only the truth!" come up. [[spoiler:Well, at least that's the case until we see Battler attempt to use the red to say something that turns out to be untrue.]] That said, it does happen to be true: Anything said in red is at worst misleading.
[[AC:{{Web Comics}}]]
* ''Webcomic/GunnerkriggCourt'': Antimony dons a PaperThinDisguise, [[http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=211 claims]] to be a robot, and "proves it" by reminding the skeptical robot doorman that robots never lie.
-->'''Reynardine''': [[SarcasmMode Your powers of trickery and deception are bewildering, child.]]
[[AC:{{Web Original}}]]
* In the days of Website/{{Usenet}}, in a football forum, one poster postulated that you need a great coach to win a Super Bowl. He then defined a "great coach" as one who had won a Super Bowl.
----
* Petitio principii (Latin: "pursuit/attack of the source")
Also called "Circular Reasoning," begging the question is "proving" that something is true by taking your conclusion as one of your premises, usually done implicitly rather than explicitly. Few people are fooled by [[CircularReasoning having your conclusion as your only premise]], as in "Joe is mad at Jill, therefore Joe is mad at Jill." In rhetoric, such arguments are called ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_%28rhetoric%29 tautologies]]'', and they're essentially [[MeaninglessMeaningfulWords a pretty but meaningless]] way of saying [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment the same thing twice]]. Therefore an argument which is begging the question often isn't obvious, even to the one making it. A premise may be substantially identical to or assume the truth of its conclusion, but be concealed by using different vocabulary, phrasing, sentence structure, or go unstated entirely.
Logic, meanwhile, has its own form of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_%28logic%29 tautology]]: a statement or chain of statements which are [[SoundValidTrue sound, valid, and true]] under any condition.[[note]]"[[Administrivia/NotASubversion A trope is either subverted or not subverted.]]"[[/note]] Begging the question is what happens when you confuse the two.
Put broadly, this fallacy applies to any argument where one or more premises are at least as contentious as the conclusion itself, and for the same reasons, such as:
--> Alice says she is honest.\\
If an honest person says something, it must be true.\\
Therefore Alice is an honest person, because an honest person says so.
An example where the fallacy is more hidden might go something like this:
--> The relationship between capitalists and laborers can only be exploitative, and mutually beneficial coexistence between them is impossible. Therefore, the path of historical development inevitably leads to socialist revolution.
In this example, both the premise and conclusion are based on Marxist ideology. If one were to accept one, by definition one already accepts the other. In other words it is not an "argument" at all, but merely a statement that says, "I am a Marxist."
Note that begging the question in arguments can be perfectly [[SoundValidTrue valid]], logically speaking. However they are not considered convincing because they do not prove anything other than what was already assumed.
"Begging the question" is often used colloquially to mean "raising the question". (Example: "With the rise of online media, this begs the question: do public libraries have a future?") This usage is a common BerserkButton for academics aware of the original meaning. It doesn't help that the original phrase was first translated from Greek into Latin, and from Latin into English, resulting in the confusing phrase, "Begging the question," which is incomprehensible to English speakers (there being no begging nor question involved) unless one already knows the dialectical context.
See also NoTrueScotsman. If both parties accuse each other of begging the question, then it's a philosophical impasse -- no one can agree on a common set of premises; compare ValuesDissonance. See also TautologicalTemplar, who believes that since they are good, everything they do is justified as good.
!!Examples:
[[AC:{{Comics}}]]
* A classic Bill Mauldin political cartoon from the early 1960s features an American soldier standing in a field of large cartoon mushrooms, a reference to the conical hats worn by Asian field workers and guerrillas, explaining to a comrade the challenge of ground combat in Vietnam: "You got your mushrooms and your toadstools. The mushrooms are harmless, the toadstools will kill you. You'll know it's a toadstool if it kills you."[[note]]A mycologist would call shenanigans on this, pointing out that there are no toadstools, there are only poisonous (and harmless) mushrooms.[[/note]]
[[AC: Literature]]
* The ''Literature/{{Discworld}} Companion'' entry for the Ephebian philosopher Expletius says that while he proved the Disc was 10,000 miles in diameter, ''all'' philosophers had their own "proof" of the Disc's size giving wildly different numbers, but "they turned out to be wrong". With ''how'' it "turned out" they were wrong carefully elided, the suggestion is we're taking the ''actual'' diameter of the Disc as Expletius stated. In other words: they are wrong because he is right.
** The [[RealLife Roundworld]] inspiration for this is mentioned in ''Literature/TheScienceOfDiscworld'': Eratosthenes proved the circumference of the Earth was 252,000 stadia. This is very accurate, assuming you use the right kind of stadium (there were several different measurements of that name). How do we know which one he used? Well, nowadays we ''do'' know the circumference of the Earth. So if that's 252,000 stadia, then...
* ''Literature/{{Temeraire}}'': One character argues that dragons [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman aren't sapient]] because, since only humans can be sapient, all signs of sapience in dragons -- being able to speak, possessing reason, building relationships with humans, and so on -- are actually evidence that they're well-trained animals.
[[AC:{{Video Games}}]]
* You can weaponize this against President Eden in ''VideoGame/Fallout3'', assuming your character has sufficient Intelligence to make the argument. President Eden believes himself to be infallible. Ask him why, and he'll say because he was always told that he was, since the moment he was born. Your character can then counter by pointing out that this is circular logic, and that his argument boils down to "An infallible person is always right. I am an infallible person, because an infallible person says so (who is me)." This sends Eden into a LogicBomb where he realizes that there's nothing in his argument that isn't being proven by itself.
* In ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'', accepting the red text as only speaking the truth requires you believe both that Beatrice is being honest and that the red text speaks only the truth when statements like "The red text speaks only the truth!" come up. [[spoiler:Well, at least that's the case until we see Battler attempt to use the red to say something that turns out to be untrue.]] That said, it does happen to be true: Anything said in red is at worst misleading.
[[AC:{{Web Comics}}]]
* ''Webcomic/GunnerkriggCourt'': Antimony dons a PaperThinDisguise, [[http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=211 claims]] to be a robot, and "proves it" by reminding the skeptical robot doorman that robots never lie.
-->'''Reynardine''': [[SarcasmMode Your powers of trickery and deception are bewildering, child.]]
[[AC:{{Web Original}}]]
* In the days of Website/{{Usenet}}, in a football forum, one poster postulated that you need a great coach to win a Super Bowl. He then defined a "great coach" as one who had won a Super Bowl.
----
to:
* Petitio principii (Latin: "pursuit/attack of the source")
Also called "Circular Reasoning," begging the question is "proving" that something is true by taking your conclusion as one of your premises, usually done implicitly rather than explicitly. Few people are fooled by [[CircularReasoning having your conclusion as your only premise]], as in "Joe is mad at Jill, therefore Joe is mad at Jill." In rhetoric, such arguments are called ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_%28rhetoric%29 tautologies]]'', and they're essentially [[MeaninglessMeaningfulWords a pretty but meaningless]] way of saying [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment the same thing twice]]. Therefore an argument which is begging the question often isn't obvious, even to the one making it. A premise may be substantially identical to or assume the truth of its conclusion, but be concealed by using different vocabulary, phrasing, sentence structure, or go unstated entirely.
Logic, meanwhile, has its own form of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tautology_%28logic%29 tautology]]: a statement or chain of statements which are [[SoundValidTrue sound, valid, and true]] under any condition.[[note]]"[[Administrivia/NotASubversion A trope is either subverted or not subverted.]]"[[/note]] Begging the question is what happens when you confuse the two.
Put broadly, this fallacy applies to any argument where one or more premises are at least as contentious as the conclusion itself, and for the same reasons, such as:
--> Alice says she is honest.\\
If an honest person says something, it must be true.\\
Therefore Alice is an honest person, because an honest person says so.
An example where the fallacy is more hidden might go something like this:
--> The relationship between capitalists and laborers can only be exploitative, and mutually beneficial coexistence between them is impossible. Therefore, the path of historical development inevitably leads to socialist revolution.
In this example, both the premise and conclusion are based on Marxist ideology. If one were to accept one, by definition one already accepts the other. In other words it is not an "argument" at all, but merely a statement that says, "I am a Marxist."
Note that begging the question in arguments can be perfectly [[SoundValidTrue valid]], logically speaking. However they are not considered convincing because they do not prove anything other than what was already assumed.
"Begging the question" is often used colloquially to mean "raising the question". (Example: "With the rise of online media, this begs the question: do public libraries have a future?") This usage is a common BerserkButton for academics aware of the original meaning. It doesn't help that the original phrase was first translated from Greek into Latin, and from Latin into English, resulting in the confusing phrase, "Begging the question," which is incomprehensible to English speakers (there being no begging nor question involved) unless one already knows the dialectical context.
See also NoTrueScotsman. If both parties accuse each other of begging the question, then it's a philosophical impasse -- no one can agree on a common set of premises; compare ValuesDissonance. See also TautologicalTemplar, who believes that since they are good, everything they do is justified as good.
!!Examples:
[[AC:{{Comics}}]]
* A classic Bill Mauldin political cartoon from the early 1960s features an American soldier standing in a field of large cartoon mushrooms, a reference to the conical hats worn by Asian field workers and guerrillas, explaining to a comrade the challenge of ground combat in Vietnam: "You got your mushrooms and your toadstools. The mushrooms are harmless, the toadstools will kill you. You'll know it's a toadstool if it kills you."[[note]]A mycologist would call shenanigans on this, pointing out that there are no toadstools, there are only poisonous (and harmless) mushrooms.[[/note]]
[[AC: Literature]]
* The ''Literature/{{Discworld}} Companion'' entry for the Ephebian philosopher Expletius says that while he proved the Disc was 10,000 miles in diameter, ''all'' philosophers had their own "proof" of the Disc's size giving wildly different numbers, but "they turned out to be wrong". With ''how'' it "turned out" they were wrong carefully elided, the suggestion is we're taking the ''actual'' diameter of the Disc as Expletius stated. In other words: they are wrong because he is right.
** The [[RealLife Roundworld]] inspiration for this is mentioned in ''Literature/TheScienceOfDiscworld'': Eratosthenes proved the circumference of the Earth was 252,000 stadia. This is very accurate, assuming you use the right kind of stadium (there were several different measurements of that name). How do we know which one he used? Well, nowadays we ''do'' know the circumference of the Earth. So if that's 252,000 stadia, then...
* ''Literature/{{Temeraire}}'': One character argues that dragons [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman aren't sapient]] because, since only humans can be sapient, all signs of sapience in dragons -- being able to speak, possessing reason, building relationships with humans, and so on -- are actually evidence that they're well-trained animals.
[[AC:{{Video Games}}]]
* You can weaponize this against President Eden in ''VideoGame/Fallout3'', assuming your character has sufficient Intelligence to make the argument. President Eden believes himself to be infallible. Ask him why, and he'll say because he was always told that he was, since the moment he was born. Your character can then counter by pointing out that this is circular logic, and that his argument boils down to "An infallible person is always right. I am an infallible person, because an infallible person says so (who is me)." This sends Eden into a LogicBomb where he realizes that there's nothing in his argument that isn't being proven by itself.
* In ''VisualNovel/UminekoWhenTheyCry'', accepting the red text as only speaking the truth requires you believe both that Beatrice is being honest and that the red text speaks only the truth when statements like "The red text speaks only the truth!" come up. [[spoiler:Well, at least that's the case until we see Battler attempt to use the red to say something that turns out to be untrue.]] That said, it does happen to be true: Anything said in red is at worst misleading.
[[AC:{{Web Comics}}]]
* ''Webcomic/GunnerkriggCourt'': Antimony dons a PaperThinDisguise, [[http://www.gunnerkrigg.com/archive_page.php?comicID=211 claims]] to be a robot, and "proves it" by reminding the skeptical robot doorman that robots never lie.
-->'''Reynardine''': [[SarcasmMode Your powers of trickery and deception are bewildering, child.]]
[[AC:{{Web Original}}]]
* In the days of Website/{{Usenet}}, in a football forum, one poster postulated that you need a great coach to win a Super Bowl. He then defined a "great coach" as one who had won a Super Bowl.
----
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 37 (click to see context) from:
* You can weaponize this against President Eden in ''VideoGame/Fallout3'', assuming your character has sufficient Intelligence to make the argument. President Eden believes himself to be infallible. Ask him why, and he'll say because he was always told that he was, since the moment he was born. Your character can then counter by pointing out that this is circular logic, and that his argument boils down to "An infallible person is always right. I am an infallible person, because an infallible person says so (who is me)." Your character even calls this out as circular logic, saying that Eden's argument is "I know because I know". This sends Eden into a LogicBomb where he realizes that there's nothing in his argument that isn't being proven by itself.
to:
* You can weaponize this against President Eden in ''VideoGame/Fallout3'', assuming your character has sufficient Intelligence to make the argument. President Eden believes himself to be infallible. Ask him why, and he'll say because he was always told that he was, since the moment he was born. Your character can then counter by pointing out that this is circular logic, and that his argument boils down to "An infallible person is always right. I am an infallible person, because an infallible person says so (who is me)." Your character even calls this out as circular logic, saying that Eden's argument is "I know because I know". This sends Eden into a LogicBomb where he realizes that there's nothing in his argument that isn't being proven by itself.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 37 (click to see context) from:
* You can weaponize this against President Eden in ''VideoGame/Fallout3'', assuming your character has sufficient Intelligence to make the argument. President Eden believes himself to be infallible. Ask him why, and he'll say because he was always told that he was, since the moment he was born. Your character can then counter by pointing out that this is circular logic, and that his argument boils down to, "An infallible person is always right. I am an infallible person, because an infallible person says so (who is me)." This sends Eden into a LogicBomb where he realizes that there's nothing in his argument that isn't being proven by itself.
to:
* You can weaponize this against President Eden in ''VideoGame/Fallout3'', assuming your character has sufficient Intelligence to make the argument. President Eden believes himself to be infallible. Ask him why, and he'll say because he was always told that he was, since the moment he was born. Your character can then counter by pointing out that this is circular logic, and that his argument boils down to, to "An infallible person is always right. I am an infallible person, because an infallible person says so (who is me)." Your character even calls this out as circular logic, saying that Eden's argument is "I know because I know". This sends Eden into a LogicBomb where he realizes that there's nothing in his argument that isn't being proven by itself.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 14,15 (click to see context) from:
An example where the fallacy is more hidden might go something like:
to:
An example where the fallacy is more hidden might go something like:
like this:
