Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

The Difference between Posing and Begging a Question

I found the nifty graphic below over at Flood's place.  It is a pithy and pictorial presentation of a point I have been hammering away at online for the last twenty years. Here is a Substack hammer-job. Some say we should give up the fight and let the forces of linguistic decadence obliterate the distinction between posing and begging a question. I am inclined to say that we should fight on against the anti-civilizational forces while well aware that fighting-on may be nothing more than a pointless rear-guard action.

What say you?

Begs the Question

 

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Bill Vallicella

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5 responses to “The Difference between Posing and Begging a Question”

  1. Joel Farmer Avatar
    Joel Farmer

    Thanks, Mr. Bill, for trying to keep the troops in line. I so appreciated your article a couple years back. Not formally trained in debate nor logical argument, I still knew something was amiss when I would hear “beg” instead of “ask” or “pose.”
    Something that I’m afraid has gone and left us is the current use of “morph” to mean “change.” Many remembered from junior-high science that the butterfly changed by way of metamorphosis, hence, I think, the flawed connection. A Greek-speaker would tell us barbarians that “morph” is the form or shape, or image. I still cringe a bit, but let it go–I’m afraid it’s made it into a few of the more modern dictionaries–and mine are all old, so what can I know? Heh…

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  2. Joel Farmer Avatar
    Joel Farmer

    Oh, and thanks, Mr. Tony, for the graphic.

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  3. BV Avatar
    BV

    Interesting point, Joel. A change of form is not a form. To use ‘morph’ to mean change is something we can expect from journalists. Most of them today tend to be barbarians.

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  4. Martin G. Avatar
    Martin G.

    Keep up the good fight. I’ve often shared your post about this on twitter or youtube comments. Would love a pithy graphic for “authoritarian” (zippycatholic ‘everyone is authoritarian, some authoritarians are sociopathic’

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  5. BV Avatar
    BV

    Martin G.,
    Thanks for propagating my post. As for ‘authoritarian,’ it has at least a couple of different meanings, and I don’t know which what Zippy intends.
    One sort of authoritarian is the person who identifies with the political authorities and uncritically accepts their claims to the right to be obeyed. One the other side we find anarchists some of whom see gov’t conspiracies everywhere: The CIA whacked JFK, RFK, Tom Merton, 9/11 was an inside job, FDR knew in advance about Pearl Harbor, etc.

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