I hit up that Wikipedia article every few years and I still don’t quite understand it. I also put nearly no effort into trying to understand it because I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything but the technically incorrect way.
“Why do all American teenagers get cars as gifts for their sixteenth birthday?” is an example: It asks why something is true even though that thing is not, in fact, true.
I’m not sure how to feel about understanding this now. Good, because I understand, or bad, because I’ll perpetually be annoyed from holding back the urge to correct.
Anyone prescriptivist about “begging the question” cannot be taken seriously about anything.
The canonical meaning is a sloppy mistranslation, and what everyone sensible intends and infers is a plain reading of those words in that order.
I hit up that Wikipedia article every few years and I still don’t quite understand it. I also put nearly no effort into trying to understand it because I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything but the technically incorrect way.
“Why do all American teenagers get cars as gifts for their sixteenth birthday?” is an example: It asks why something is true even though that thing is not, in fact, true.
I’m not sure how to feel about understanding this now. Good, because I understand, or bad, because I’ll perpetually be annoyed from holding back the urge to correct.
Thanks, I guess?
There’s no need to correct people using the phrase to mean “prompting the question”, that’s practically definition two at this point.
If you see people commuting the rhetorical fallacy, however, go ahead and call them out.
I once separated my shoulder trying to explain ‘begs the question’.
… while hanging from a cliff?