{"id":142,"date":"2007-05-20T07:31:00","date_gmt":"2007-05-20T14:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/MamaOKnits\/2007\/05\/20\/begging-you-to-stop-the-questions\/"},"modified":"2007-05-20T07:31:00","modified_gmt":"2007-05-20T14:31:00","slug":"begging-you-to-stop-the-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/begging-you-to-stop-the-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Begging (you to stop) the Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are a couple of things that really irk me…usually it’s the English teacher in me (though I’m no Grammar Nazi)–things like “irregardless”, stuff like that.<\/p>\n

But there’s a new one that’s becoming more and more prevalent and it’s really quite upsetting because this one falls into the realm of logic<\/a>, not grammar and usage.<\/p>\n

My feeling: the world is already too freakin’ illogical as it is. We don’t need to compound the problem with sloppy language.<\/p>\n

The problem: “begging the question”; “that begs the question…”<\/p>\n

Here’s how I just heard this used on NPR (for goodness sake!): <\/p>\n

Interviewee: …and his leaving the World Bank has made a lot of folks happy.
Interviewer: Well, that begs the question, of course…why did it take so long?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Um. No.
See it, “leads to the quesiton,” it “raises the question,” but it does not BEG the question. That’s a term of logic–a material or informal fallacy in fact.<\/p>\n

Here’s what the (sometimes dubious but in this case correct) Wikipedia<\/a> has to say on the subject:<\/p>\n

In logic, begging the question has traditionally described a type of logical fallacy, petitio principii, in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in one of the premises ([1] [2] [3] [4] ). Begging the question is related to the fallacy known as circular argument, circulus in probando, vicious circle or circular reasoning. As a concept in logic the first known definition in the West is by the Greek philosopher Aristotle around 350 B.C., in his book Prior Analytics.<\/p>\n

The phrase is sometimes used to simply mean “poses the question” [5]. This recasting of the term more directly describes a related fallacy, known as the Fallacy of many questions, that occurs when the evidence given for a proposition is as much in need of proof as the proposition itself<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And for those who like Logic (again, from the Wiki site):<\/p>\n

The following structure of an argument in which the question is begged is common:<\/p>\n

* p implies q
* q implies r
* r implies p
* suppose p
* therefore, q
* therefore, r
* therefore, p.<\/p>\n

Which, when simplified, shows itself as obviously flawed:<\/p>\n

* p implies p
* suppose p
* therefore, p.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Okay, so the end of that is pretty darn clear, you can’t use something to prove itself.<\/p>\n

That food is awful because it’s disgusting.
He’s a jerk–you can tell becuase he’s so unpleasant.
You can’t trust that politician–I mean, come on! He’s a politician.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See the difference between that and the NPR example above?<\/p>\n

Normally I’m not such a stickler. But when someone like Aristotle put pen to paper a couple thousand years ago and preserved this idea–an idea which has been used correctly for a couple thousand years–well… I’m just a little uncomfortable having we lazy Americans just…you know…change it. ‘Cuz it’s easier that way.<\/p>\n

I generally distrust “easy.”<\/p>\n

My two cents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are a couple of things that really irk me…usually it’s the English teacher in me (though I’m no Grammar Nazi)–things like “irregardless”, stuff like that. But there’s a new one that’s becoming more and more prevalent and it’s really quite upsetting because this one falls into the realm of logic, not grammar and usage. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-fun"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crafting-a-life.com\/mamaoknits\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}