Can Big Questions Be Begged?

Fallacies are mistakes in inference, BUT

Begging the question is not a mistake in inference.

Is it a fallacy at all?

Robinson (1971) says that there is no logical fallacy of begging the question but only a pragmatic fallacy in the game of elenchus.

This is a game played in Aristotle’s Academy and is not played any more, and moreover is irrelevant to an inquiry aimed at the truth.

Therefore, begging

the question is not a fallacy

Hintikka and Walton disagree with Robinson about the

irrelevance of elenchus, taking it to be a good model not only of argumentation but also of

scientific enquiry.

It depends on the context whether begging the question is a fallacy.

Different contexts have different rules and can be shown by dialectical models.

Big questions should never be asked at the outset, for this is to ask the answerer to grant immediately what one is supposed to prove.

Instead, big questions should be asked only after eliciting answers to ‘small’

questions.

The Pragmatic TheoryHamblin introduces two rules intended to rule out question-begging:(W) Why A? may not be used unless A is a commitment of the hearer and not of the speaker.(R1) The answer to Why A? if it is not ‘Statement A’ or ‘No commitment A’, must be in terms of statements that are already commitments of both speaker and hearer.It is useless to appeal to propositions that the questioner is not committed to, unless the questioner can be brought to be committed to them via commitments they do have by being shown how they follow deductively from those commitments (this is the relevance of R1). Obviously, a restatement of the thesis does not bring about such a commitment because if the questioner were already committed to the thesis, then (W) – which says that you can only question propositions that you are not committed to – would have made the question impermissible. The mere fact that the question has been asked entails that the questioner is in doubt over the thesis.But, according the people like van Eemeren, Habermas, and Aristotle himself, a participant in a dialogue should not be forbidden from questioning any assertion, even one she is convinced of.

It is a valid desire for the respondent to want evidence that the arguer is justified to give the argument that he gives. If the arguer commits some

logical fallacy, then it is incidental whether the premises he uses are shared commitments or not. Sinnott-Armstrong calls this arguer

justification in contrast to audience justification.

The God and Bible caseElla: God exists.

Brad: How do you know?Ella: The Bible says so.

Brad: How do I know what the Bible says is true?Ella: Because the Bible is the Word of God.

If Brad were doubtful about whether God exists then they are in a persuasion-dialogue and Ella’s argument would be completely

ineffective in persuading him otherwise, which is to say that it could not fulfil its probative function as the procedural rules of persuasion-dialogues demand. But, says Walton (2005, 100-106), if Brad were a believer who was committed to the truth of the Bible then they are not in a persuasion-dialogue but in another kind of dialogue whose rules do not make the same demand on the argument; hence, the circularity in this case is not vicious, but serves perhaps to remind

Brad of his commitments.

This is an example of dependence circularity. This occurs when our evidence for the conclusion is the same as (or

perhaps only partially overlaps) our evidence for the premises

Two kinds of dependence circularity

The Bible is the Word of

God

God exists

If any evidence that the Bible is the Word of God will also be, independently, evidence that God

exists, then the argument is, in Walton’s

terminology, inevitably circularThe Bible is full of wise

sayings

A miracle

But if there is evidence for one of the claims

that is not also evidence for the other, then the

argument is not inevitably circular.

The Twardowski Case

1.All the members of the club attended the University of Texas.2.Twardowski is a member of the club.3.Therefore, Twardowski attended the University of Texas.

We assume that the reason that we believe (1) is because we are personally acquainted with each member of the club, including Twardowski, and have established that they attended the University of Texas. This means that (2) and (3) would be among our premises for (1) were (1) to be our conclusion. This is also our only evidence for (1) in so far as (1) cannot be established conclusively without it. Therefore, it is argued, the argument is inevitably circular, and when used in a persuasion-dialogue it begs the question.

The Epistemic TheoryThe purpose of

arguments is to bring about a change in belief,

e.g., an increased credence in the conclusion (or in

Bayesian terms, a posterior probability higher than the prior

probability), an argument begs the question if it fails to achieve this

purpose when addressed to a rational believer. A

dialectical approach that uses a speaker-

commitment model rather than a belief-

desire-intention model only partially achieves

this.

There are two kinds of epistemic theory

It is not arguments as such but arguments-in-context that

can be judged fallacious or not. According to the

subjective epistemic theory, the context gives

psychological facts about the audience, e.g., how in fact it comes to know its premises.

Context does not consist of psychological facts but of

epistemic relations that are objective in the given situation. A fallacious

argument is always fallaious in that context, irrespective of the actual epistemic states of

the audience.

Sanford offered the Twardowski case as a way of showing that you could not eliminate reference to how the audience comes to know

Suppose that there was a second way of coming to know that all the members of the club were former attendees of the University of Texas, e.g. a bye-law, but that the audience did not know this bye-law although it was accessible.

Intuititively, if the argument was fallacious before then it is still fallacious now. The fact that there is a second way of knowing one of the premises cannot be relevant unless it is actually used to come to know the premises.

Walton´s pragmatic theory has the same verdict. The objective epistemic theory dissents – the arguer begs the question, they say, but the argument-in-context does not.

Critique• A second way of knowing a premise can never be logically

ruled out.

• Therefore, there are no inevitably circular arguments.

• Therefore, even though the same evidence that establishes the premises also establishes the conclusion, the arguer still argues cooperatively as long as the premises are not equivalent to the conclusion, and as long as there is no better argument.

• If there is a better argument, then the arguer has violated a Principle of Cooperation, but this does not mean that they or the argument are begging the question.

THE UNBEGGABILITY THESIS:

Big questions,

which I take to be questions

with multiple presuppositions,

cannot be begged.

THE TRIVIALITY THESIS: The only question-

begging arguments are particularly trivial cases

of equivalence circularity where there

is only one premise with one presupposition.

Hamblin (1970):

“An argument is more than just a

collection of statements. 'P,

therefore Q' states P and states Q, but

there are other ways of stating P and Q

that do not amount to arguing from P as a premiss to Q as a

conclusion.”

Mill (1882, 69): [W]hen the two or more

propositions . . . are stated absolutely, and not under any condition or proviso, it is not a

proposition at all, but a plurality of propositions; since what it expresses is not a single assertion, but several

assertions, which, if true when joined, are true also when separated. But

there is a kind of proposition which . . . consist of several propositions . . . but one assertion; and its truth does

not at all imply that of the simple propositions which compose it. . . . [W]hen the simple propositions are

connected by the particle or; as, either A is B or C is D; or by the particle if; as, A is B if C is D.

If a proposition is asserted,

then it occurs in an asserted

context.

If a proposition is not asserted (because not

known to be true), then it occurs in

an unasserted context.

pqr qr

Argument Assertions made in conclusion

Assertions made in premises

pqr

qrVALID

(AFV) Eitheri) If there is an empty sequence of rules of inference that, when applied to the premises, result in the conclusion, then this is not an argument-form at all; ORii) If there is no sequence of rules of inference that, when applied to the premises, result in the conclusion, then this is an invalid argument-form; ORiii) If there is a finite, non-empty sequence of rules of inference that, when applied to the premises, result in the conclusion, then this is a valid argument-form.

THE UNBEGGABILITY THESIS:

Big questions,

which I take to be questions

with multiple presuppositions,

cannot be begged.

THE TRIVIALITY THESIS: The only question-

begging arguments are particularly trivial cases

of equivalence circularity where there

is only one premise with one presupposition.

pqr qr

is not an argument

BUT

nor is it question-begging

BECAUSE

someone could have evidence for pq that is not evidence for q

““p, therefore p” always begs the question if p is atomic and the premise

and conclusion express the same proposition in the same way. Otherwise, it

never begs the question.”

An arguer who gives pq as a premise takes a chance, because any evidence against p is also evidence against pq and, hence, against qr

Even though p is not used in the inference, evidence for or against it is also evidence for or against the conclusion and for or against the arguer’s own justification.

Can Big Questions Be Begged?Thank you