Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Is Our Children Learning

Dear Internet, the World, and Everyone Who Currently Speaks, Writes, Signs, Ideates, or Otherwise Interacts Anglophonically,

To "beg the question" is not to require, suggest, raise, demand, or cause a question. It is a form of logical fallacy in which an argument or proposition is assumed to be true based on its own premises.

Love,
IOZ

20 comments:

ilikeu said...

irregardless, education should be abolished.

Erik R. said...

Knowing the true meaning of that phrase makes watching news on television absolutely maddening.

Anonymous said...

I love you.


(bookmarking this permalink.)

alexa-blue said...

!

ExecutedToday said...

They could care less.

It's literally going in one ear and out the other.

Anonymous said...

See also
http://begthequestion.info/

puppylander said...

i think the problem comes not from the word "question" but from the word "beg".

Jim Wetzel said...

Not that it's a sufficient excuse for those who misuse the phrase, but I don't think "begging the question" is especially descriptive of the fallacy that it names.

I find, though, that I can't suggest a foolproof alternative, in this world where so many fail so egregiously to tow the line.

Ashley said...

But IOZ! It's fun to fill up space with words. Why worry so much about what they mean. They sound so nice! Begging and questions. Ha! Those beggars and their questions!

[If you’re taking requests, please rain on “nauseous” next.]

Anonymous said...

IOZ - since I have recently named you as my favorite blog, it is funny to me that you should bring this up as I have written about it several times before.

Also, I own this shirt.

Justin said...

It begs the question as to how this confusion began.

Anonymous said...

ioz, you livin' in the past

what it mean is what the dude sayin' it mean, knowwhatimean?

word

Isys said...

How can anyone be concerned with begging the question when there are whole hoards of people on the loose who spell lose loose?

Ashley said...

@isys: sorry, you loosed me there.

[Someone had to do it. Thank me at the wake.]

stephanie g said...

I guess we have a lot of prescriptivists here. "Begs the question" is definitely a goner by now and has been for years. I hardly ever see anyone use its original meaning. We may still be able to save "for all intents and purposes" and maybe "literally."

The Promiscuous Reader said...

isys: what about the hordes of people who confuse "hoards" and "hordes"?

Isys said...

The Promiscuous Reader said...
isys: what about the hordes of people who confuse "hoards" and "hordes"?


At least there's less of them and most of them are neutered.

Or is it fewer?

JYD said...

since we're picking nits, it's "toe the line" not "tow the line". i wonder if henry higgins was a libertarian.

The Promiscuous Reader said...

Stephanie G, actually I'm not a prescriptivist, I'm just neurotic.

I usually don't mind too much when people misuse "beg the question," partly because offhand I can't think of another pithy idiom for "this brings this question to mind." (I usually use "brings this question to mind" myself, or "raises the question.") But it does bother me when it's misused in academic writing, because I think it's legitimate to expect academics to use the language correctly. (Quit laughing. I know.)

F'rinstance, I just finished reading Kathryn Bond Stockton's "Beautiful Bottom, Beautiful Shame," and it wasn't bad, especially for queer theory nowadays. But she misused "begs the question" several times, along with some other terms. It seems to me that if you want to do literary criticism, you have to have a sharp ear for subtleties of language. It's like being a tone-deaf music critic. Besides that, in her acknowledgments Stockton thanked various people who'd read the manuscript in whole or in part, and I couldn't help wondering how the book could have made it to print without anyone's saying, "Hey, Kathy, you keep saying 'begs the question' -- I do not think it means what you think it does."

borehole said...

This used to bug me, but once I let my language-Nazi guard down I realized that I preferred the incorrect usage. Same with mispronouncing "consummate." Oh, I still correct people, but now it's just to preen, not because I actually care.

"Comprise," though. Hoo boy, that one never fails to piss me off. And it's in every third sentence nowadays.