As per the documentation http://nmap.org/6/ http://nmap.org/6/ : We also felt that the old -sP ("ping scan") option was a bit misleading because current versio

As per the documentation http://nmap.org/6/ http://nmap.org/6/ : We also felt that the old -sP ("ping scan") option was a bit misleading because current versions of Nmap can go much further (including -sC and --traceroute) even with port scans disabled. We will retain support for the previous option names for the foreseeable future.