Topics Language

Question I am upset that people have started using 'it begs the question' to introduce a question. For instance, "it begs the question: why do people incorrectly use phrases?" So my question, which isn't begged, is this: as philosophers, don't we have a duty to correct people in this regard? Or, is this (incorrect) use something we can live with?

Accepted:
October 17, 2005

Comments

Perhaps you've seen it, but William Safire had a column in the New York Times magazine about this a few years ago.

Language changes all the time, and words/phrases come to have new meanings. I agree with you that this particular change is frustrating philosophically, and it does make me kind of grumpy when I hear it, but that said, I'm not sure that there's much we can do about it. It seems to me that it's already too late -- in ordinary use, "beg the question" has already come to mean something like "raise the question."

In philosophical discussion, of course, we can and should retain the original use of this phrase. I think of it much the way I do the terms "valid" and "sound". In ordinary conversation, it's perfectly acceptable to say "she makes a valid point" or "her point is sound", where both "valid" and "sound" are being used as synonyms for "true" or "plausible". But when discussing and evaluating arguments, we reserve the terms "valid" and "sound" as technical terms to apply to particular characteristics of arguments -- and in this context, the alternative ordinary uses are jarring to the ear.

I could be wrong about this, but I believe that the original use of the term "begs the question" is the one that has lately become common and that the "technical" use of the phrase by logicians and philosophers was adapted from the original use. I take "That argument begs the question" in some sense to be short for "That argument begs the question originally at issue".