Going in circles by 'begging the question'
An online search of the phrases begging the question and begs the question yields many examples of people using it to mean 鈥渞aising the question or issue.鈥� Alternatively, when someone says, 鈥淵ou鈥檙e just begging the question!鈥� they mean you鈥檙e not giving 鈥渁 straightforward answer,鈥� as Fowler鈥檚 Modern English Usage explains.
A small but strident group of word mavens insists these uses are incorrect. Communications lecturer Baden Eunson numbers them among the worst 鈥渕onstrosities鈥� in English: begs the question is 鈥渘ot a synonym for prompts/suggests/gives rise to the question,鈥� he writes.聽
What does the phrase really mean and why is it so contentious?
Begs the question is a 16th-century English translation of a medieval Latin translation of ancient Greek, providing plenty of room for disagreement and misunderstanding. In a list of logical fallacies (examples of flawed or deceptive reasoning), the philosopher Aristotle included 鈥渁ssuming the original point.鈥� This boils down to an argument in which the premises already assume that the conclusion is true, or in which they simply restate it, something like 鈥淔ree speech is valuable because countries that have free speech are better off.鈥� A key word Aristotle employed to define this fallacy had a number of different meanings in Greek. To philosophers and logicians, it meant 鈥渢o postulate鈥� (鈥渢o assume or claim as true, existent, or necessary鈥�), but more commonly meant 鈥渢o ask, to beg.鈥澛�
In the Middle Ages, Aristotle鈥檚 phrasing was translated into Latin as petitio principii. Petitio looks a lot like 鈥減etition,鈥� and that is indeed one of its meanings, but it also carried the philosophical sense of 鈥渁 thing postulated.鈥� Principium is 鈥渂eginning,鈥� in this case, 鈥渢he original point.鈥澛�
For a long time, people used petitio principii as a technical term to talk about this fallacy, no matter what language they were writing in. In the late 16th century, though, people gave it an English name. They translated petitio not in its abstruse philosophical sense but according to its more common meaning, 鈥渢o ask, beg,鈥� and principium as the 鈥減rincipal issue,鈥� e.g., 鈥渢he question.鈥� When you 鈥渂egged the question,鈥� then, you were making a circular argument, in the way Aristotle had described.
This is the way that Mr. Eunson and his fellow controversialists insist the phrase must still be used. Few people have occasion to discuss fallacies of reasoning, though, and all English speakers know what beg and question mean. Without the philosophical context, we are left to construct meanings for a phrase that doesn鈥檛 make much literal sense.
