Begging the Question

Heather Rivera

The death penalty is wrong, because killing people is immoral.

Jane Doe

Begging the question (petitio principii, Latin for “seeking the beginning”) is a logical fallacy in which the premise of an argument presupposes the truth of its conclusion; in other words, the argument takes for granted what it is supposed to prove.

(1) Claim X assumes X is true.

(2) Therefore, claim X is true.

Examples of this form in use would be arguments or reasoning such as:

If such actions were not illegal, then they would not be prohibited by law.

Circular reasoning is bad because it is not very good.

The Bible is true because God exists, and God exists because the Bible says so.

The rights of the minority are every bit as sacred as the rights of the majority, for the majority’s rights have no greater value than those of the minority.

Free speech is important because everyone should speak freely.

As one can easily see, begging the question is really just a way to say the exact same thing by rephrasing it.

In works such as Prior Analytics and Topics, Aristotle was the first to introduce begging the question by stating what translates to “asking the initial thing” or “asking the original point”:

Begging or assuming the point at issue consists (to take the expression in its widest sense) of failing to demonstrate the required proposition. But there are several other ways in which this may happen; for example, if the argument has not taken syllogistic form at all, he may argue from premises which are less known or equally unknown, or he may establish the antecedent by means of its consequents; for demonstration proceeds from what is more certain and is prior. Now begging the question is none of these. [...] If, however, the relation of B to C is such that they are identical, or that they are clearly convertible, or that one applies to the other, then he is begging the point at issue [. B]egging the question is proving what is not self-evident by means of itself [.] either because predicates which are identical belong to the same subject, or because the same predicate belongs to subjects which are identical. (Prior Analytics II xvi 64b28-65a26)

This particular logical fallacy is very often committed in our modern speech. We hear fallacies in our daily lives, and most of us don’t know that what we are hearing is fallacious. Labeling an argument as “begging the question” is often itself using the fallacy’s name incorrectly, and yet we accept this incor­rect usage. Moreover, this misuse has become commonplace in advertising, the media, and literature as well. It is worth noting that the media are the biggest culprits of this misuse; anytime that you turn on any 24-hour news outlet, you will almost certainly hear a news personality say to whomever is being interviewed, “Well, this certainly begs the question,” and then insert the question brought up by the answer previously given.

This misuse also happens often in our daily lives. Think of a conversation with a friend, family member, or neighbor about the latest news on some celebrity.

Speaker i: Miss Popular Actress is in court again; I can’t understand why they give her so much coverage.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that really begs the question, why does anybody want to hear or read about her?

Another example in common speech would be:

Timmy told me he is going to attend Big State University this fall. This begs the question, how will he do so far away from home?

The previous examples show the utter misuse of the term begging the ques­tion. These examples are of nothing more than further questions being raised, issues prompted by the original information being supplied or pre­sented. They are not showing a circular type of reasoning or presenting the initial statement as the conclusion or as a fact to prove the statement.

Politics is a common place for begging the question. Politicians in a debate often beg the question by giving answers that give the conclusion of the person they are citing as a truth or fact and never show any real proof of the matter. “Abortion is ending a life and murder is ending a life, so abortion is murder”: that is the usual circle of that particular politically charged argu­ment. Another example from politics might be: “Marriage is between a man and a woman, so same-sex marriage is not marriage.” The presupposition that marriage is between a man and woman in this statement “proves” that anything else cannot be marriage; this indirectly states the conclusion in the initial point. Watch any political debate, and you’ll likely see that begging the question is a common practice to avoid actually giving a concrete answer to the actual questions presented.

References

Aristotle. 1938. On Interpretation. Categories. Prior Analytics, translated by Harold

Percy Cooke and Hugh Tredennick. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Garner, B.A. 1995. Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.