4 ms·
Just fyi, you're raising the question, not begging it.
by moogleii 13y ago
Just fyi, you're raising the question, not begging it.
- dragonwriter 13y agoDespite the desires of pedantic prescriptivists obsessed with maintaining the "purity" of a poor translation into English of the Latin name of a logical fallacy as the sole use of the phrase "Begs the question" in English (a use which is always intransitive), the always-transitive (and thus, impossible to confuse with the fallacy name) use of "begs the question" in a way which makes more sense with the normal English definition of the words in the phrase is in widespread use, is well-understood, and actually provides an avenue for the intransitive fallacy-naming use to make some sense (as the intransitive use can be viewed as a special case of the transitive form where the object -- the question a call for the answer is made -- is the same question that the original proposition was attempting to answer.) So, the pedantry on this point is pointless and counterproductive.