Misuse Alert: Begging the Question

Guest post by Ron Vlieger

It seems that almost every day now you hear people using the phrase, “That begs the question.”  Unfortunately, most people get it wrong.

I suspect they’re like me; they know that for some reason that isn’t quite clear, it sounds smarter than, “That raises the question.”  So they think if they use it, they’ll sound smart, too.

I was lucky.  Maybe I picked it up in Freshman Writing, or maybe I heard William F. Buckley use it on Firing Line to put old Bella Abzug in her place.

In any case, I had a vague notion it meant more than raising a question, and a little research revealed that it is a logical fallacy.  It means to assume what you are trying to prove.

If all WFB had been saying was, “Bella, that raises a question,” milquetoast responses like that would’ve killed Firing Line in its first season.  What he was really saying was, “Bella, I believe your argument is a classic case of petitio principia.  You’re assuming that which you are trying to prove.”

Unfortunately for his opponents, WFB could spot a logical fallacy from a hundred paces.

Here’s an example of begging the question that turned up with a little web research:

Person A: Selling liquor on Sundays is illegal in this town, because it’s bad.

Person B: They sell liquor in the next town over on Sundays, and everyone’s okay with that.  Why is it bad?

Person A: If it weren’t bad, it wouldn’t be illegal, would it?

Person A demonstrates that begging the question is a form of circular reasoning.  He is begging the question (Why is it bad to sell liquor on Sunday?) because the answer he gives fails to demonstrate that selling liquor on Sunday is bad.  It just assumes it’s bad.

Here’s another, less obvious one:

Person A: I believe you should be a good person.

Person B: But I just want to make as much money as possible and do what I want to do.  Why should I be good?

Person A: Because being good benefits society.

Again, Person A begs the question (Why should I be good?) because the answer he gave is the same as his premise.  “Benefit society” is just another way of saying “Be good.”  Being good is benefiting society.  You might as well say, “Benefiting society benefits society.”

If you’re interested in other logical fallacies, check out a book on composition and rhetoric, such as: The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric.

Ron Vlieger is a financial writer in New York City.

1 Comment