> It invites or raises the question rather than begs it, but your point is understood. By my reading, 'nicklaf used the phrase in the technically correct way.

> It invites or raises the question rather than begs it, but your point is understood. By my reading, 'nicklaf used the phrase in the technically correct way. But, as a recovering philosophy major, I'll just point out that the phrase "begging the question" is just a bad 16th century English translation of the Latin phrase "petitio principii" that literally meant "requesting a postulate", and which itself was a medieval translation of the original Greek phrases "τὸ ἐν ἀρχῇ αἰτεῖσθαι" and "τὸ ἐν ἀρχῇ λαμβάνειν", which meant, respectively, "asking the original point" and "assuming the original point."[1] We say that the English translation is "bad" because the translators were jumping through hoops to avoid using the fancy Latin in favor of the vernacular (or vulgar) English. I caucus with the folks that say that we should just use the Latin phrase, "petition principii", as we do with other well-known fallacies. [1] http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2290 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2290