An irritating article about "begging the question"

[skullturf]

I read the following article this week and found it very annoying.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zoe-trisk ... 99663.html

I'm not above having language-related pet peeves; I have a few of them myself. But it's about picking your battles, and the tone one takes when fighting those battles.

Yes, using "begs the question" to mean "raises the question" is "incorrect" in the rather narrow sense that it's not the traditional historical meaning. But that's no reason to say things like "simply incorrect" and "it makes you sound dumber" and "There are, however, SOME people who actually know what this phrase means."

Saying "begs the question" to mean "raises the question" does not mean the speaker is lacking in intellect. It just means the speaker is ignorant of a particular historical fact about a particular expression. The "raises the question" meaning is a reasonable extrapolation from the modern everyday meanings of "beg" and "question". People use it to mean "raises the question" because they understand the words "beg" and "question".

By the way, Aristotle in 350 BC obviously didn't call it "begging the question"; he called it something in Greek. The English phrase "begging the question" first appeared in the 16th century, and is a translation of the Latin "petitio principii". But "petitio principii" can be translated into English in many ways, and it's not at all clear that "begging the question" is among the best or most elegant ways. One attempt might be something like "requesting the very principle under debate"; shorter alternatives might include "assuming the conclusion" or just "petitio principii" itself.

I read and write arguments for a living, and I'm of the opinion that we don't especially need the historical meaning of "begging the question". I don't think it aids clarity, and frankly, I think it serves largely as a shibboleth that proves the speaker took some courses in philosophy or classics. I myself don't use "begging the question" at all; I would use "assuming the conclusion" or "circular reasoning" or "petitio principii" for the older meaning, and "raising the question" or "prompting the question" or "bringing up the question" for the newer meaning.

There are some things in language to be pedantic about. But I don't think the historical meaning of "begging the question" is one of them.

EDIT: The older meaning of "begging the question" is a trivia fact, a historical quirk, an accidental consequence of shifting meanings and the particular times that translations happened. It's not an inherent part of being a clever person or being good at reasoning.

[eSOANEM]

I use "begging the question" in both senses.

If I say "you're begging the question" or "this is begging the question", I mean it as the logical fallacy. If, in the progress of a discussion I say "this begs the question" I mean it in the modern sense.

I think kicking up a fuss about it one way or t'other is not productive. Saying people are "wrong" for using it in the modern sense is pointless, arbitrary and the etymological fallacy; trying to change the name of the fallacy "begging the question" however is unlikely to actually result in any change so is probably pointless (although, communicating clearly and using alternative name purely for that end is undoubtedly reasonable).

[skullturf]

Another thing I found annoying about the article is in paragraphs 4 to 8. The author appears to confuse what I see as two very different things.

Okay, so the author doesn't like the newer meaning of "begging the question". Also, in paragraphs 4 to 8, she indicates that she doesn't like people being unnecessarily opaque or confusing or long-winded. But being long-winded seems to me like a very different kind of flaw from being historically inaccurate, yet the author appears to indiscriminately lump them together under the broad category of "inaccurate" or "not making sense".

It's reminiscent of some people who peeve about language who seems to have a very unsophisticated understanding of the word "wrong". It's as though there's just one kind of "wrong", and "wrong" just means whatever deviates in any way from The One Correct Way That We Smart People Know.

I realize I may be exaggerating a little, or creating a bit of a straw man, but I did find the tone of the article annoying, and I did feel like I was picking up a little "vibe" of what I describe above.

[eSOANEM]

she indicates that she doesn't like people being unnecessarily opaque

This of course being the exact problem with the philosophical use of "begging the question".

[skullturf]

she indicates that she doesn't like people being unnecessarily opaque

This of course being the exact problem with the philosophical use of "begging the question".

Excellent point.

People can have different opinions about the aesthetics of a phrase, and different opinions about the importance of preserving historical usages for their own sake.

But I think it's pretty clear that the newer meaning of "begs the question" can be easily "worked out" from the common everyday meanings of the words "beg" and "question", and that the older meaning can't. To learn the older meaning, you have to read the right books or take the right classes.

[goofy]

Because of the phrase's widespread misusage, academic linguist Mark Liberman has suggested abandoning it entirely. He reasons that because of all the shifts in language and language meaning over the years, the relationship of the phrase's literal meaning to its figurative meaning is unintelligible, and now only serves to confuse people.

Here's what Liberman wrote about "beg the question". He says nothing at all about literal or figurative meanings. And he didn't say that the relationship between the meanings would confuse people, what he said was:

If you use the phrase to mean "raise the question", some pedants will silently dismiss you as a dunce, while others will complain loudly, thus distracting everyone else from whatever you wanted to say. If you complain about others' "misuse", you come across as an annoying pedant. And if you use the phrase to mean "assume the conclusion", almost no one will understand you.