Can someone please give me a ‘real’ or formal example of #4/begging the question? I think it’s commonly used to mean ‘raises the question’, which isn’t the same thing.
God is all good because he wants for nothing. Paraphrasing Descartes.
Assumes that there is a God, assumes that it is all powerful, assumes that all evil comes from the desire for more stuff. You are asked to accept a whole mess of stuff is true that isn’t supported.
Having to accept certain premises isn’t exactly the issue with begging the question.
Begging the question is when a person accidentally or intentionally assumes their conclusion, i.e. the thing they’re trying to prove/argue for.
For example, if your friend is trying to prove the pythagorean theorem from math to you, and after a long list of geometric and algebraic work they sneak in a usage of the pythagorean theorem to reach the conclusion without either of you noticing, then your friend has begged the question. Their usage of the pythagorean theorem assumes the thing they wanted to prove in the first place was true.
To go further, you can have a conditional claim like “A implies B”, that doesn’t beg the question, but in your reasoning for showing why A really does imply B, you can still beg the question (which is what happens in my pythagorean example).
Certain arguments can have premises that do essentially beg the question too though. If I make a conditional claim like “A and B are true therefore B is true”, then my conditional claim assumes B is true in the first place. You can’t really tell anything about whether or not B is actually true from my claim because my claim assumes B is true from the start.
Just having to assume certain premises isn’t inherently logically fallacious. All true conditional claims depend on their premises to guarantee the truth of their conclusion. The issues that can arise with conditional claims are usually that their premises are false or that their premises don’t actually imply their conclusion.
Can someone please give me a ‘real’ or formal example of #4/begging the question? I think it’s commonly used to mean ‘raises the question’, which isn’t the same thing.
God is all good because he wants for nothing. Paraphrasing Descartes.
Assumes that there is a God, assumes that it is all powerful, assumes that all evil comes from the desire for more stuff. You are asked to accept a whole mess of stuff is true that isn’t supported.
Having to accept certain premises isn’t exactly the issue with begging the question.
Begging the question is when a person accidentally or intentionally assumes their conclusion, i.e. the thing they’re trying to prove/argue for.
For example, if your friend is trying to prove the pythagorean theorem from math to you, and after a long list of geometric and algebraic work they sneak in a usage of the pythagorean theorem to reach the conclusion without either of you noticing, then your friend has begged the question. Their usage of the pythagorean theorem assumes the thing they wanted to prove in the first place was true.
To go further, you can have a conditional claim like “A implies B”, that doesn’t beg the question, but in your reasoning for showing why A really does imply B, you can still beg the question (which is what happens in my pythagorean example).
Certain arguments can have premises that do essentially beg the question too though. If I make a conditional claim like “A and B are true therefore B is true”, then my conditional claim assumes B is true in the first place. You can’t really tell anything about whether or not B is actually true from my claim because my claim assumes B is true from the start.
Just having to assume certain premises isn’t inherently logically fallacious. All true conditional claims depend on their premises to guarantee the truth of their conclusion. The issues that can arise with conditional claims are usually that their premises are false or that their premises don’t actually imply their conclusion.
“We should raise the voting age because people under 18 shouldn’t vote”
The conclusion is rephrased to support itself. In this case it begs the question why shouldn’t people under 18 vote?
I think “raising the question” can also be used in this instance, while “begs the question” exclusively references the fallacy.
Listen to any “discussion” Ben Shapiro is part of