What is “Begging the Question?”
“Begging the question” is a form of logical fallacy in which an argument is assumed to be true without evidence other than the argument itself. When one begs the question, the initial assumption of a statement is treated as already proven without any logic to show why the statement is true in the first place.
A simple example would be “I think he is ugly because he is unattractive.” The adjective “unattractive” does not explain why the subject is “ugly”—they virtually amount to the same subjective meaning, and the proof is merely a restatement of the premise. The sentence has begged the question.
What is it Not?
To beg the question does not mean “to raise the question.” (e.g. “It begs the question, why is he so dumb?”) This is a common error of usage made by those who mistake the word “question” in the phrase to refer to a literal question. Sadly, the error has grown more and more ubiquitous common with time, such that even journalists, advertisers, and major mass media entities have fallen prey to “BTQ Abuse.”
While descriptivists and other such laissez-faire linguists are content to allow the misconception to fall into the vernacular, it cannot be denied that logic and philosophy stand to lose an important conceptual label should the meaning of BTQ become diluted to the point that we must constantly distinguish between the traditional usage and the erroneous “modern” usage. This is why we fight.
The Ring Clock—way cool!
I worked from home today, during which time I also got two loads of laundry done. Still have one to go. Sheets.
Late in the afternoon, I ran by the post office, where I made sure I had enough postage on a letter and that it would get where it was going by the date I want it to arrive.
I also bought some more 41-cent stamps, since they finally had some other than the American flag and the Forever ones. I got some love ones, and some pollination ones:
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I ran by the Center for Excellence in Curricular Engagement to retry faxing some registration forms for an upcoming conference, where it once again failed.
I did several permutations of dialing format tests, including with and without the “9” first, with and without the “1” in the number, just picking up the receiver on the fax and dialing a local number, and then a long distance number. My troubleshooting conclusion: The fax line is not allowing long distance calls.
Myra put a call in to get the problem looked at, and I ran over to the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning, and tried the faxing from there, where it worked on the first try.
I had no intentions of going out tonight, but when I awoke after falling asleep reading, I had a voice mail from Joe.
I got to Flex at about 10:30, and there were six people in there, and one of them was Nikki. I had one $1.25 cocktail, and left to find Joe parked out front on the phone with his sister.
I told him about the “crowd,” and we headed over to CCs, where it was Open Mic night with Price and Rice, as well as $1.50 Yuengling and free pool night.
We played a few games of pool, Joe sang a few songs with Rice, and we ended the evening trying to say goodbye to a very drunk Josh, who was there with his [roommate? friend?] Jeff, and who always had “one more thing” to say.
They (Josh and Jeff) tried to get us to complete a Holy Trinity (i.e., visiting all three of our gay bars in one night), but we snuck out when they weren’t looking.
That’s a lot of Js: Joe, John, Josh, and Jeff. But I digress…