What does it mean to “beg the question” in an argument and why is it not a good debate tactic?

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In a debate club environment.

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Just for clarity, “begging the question” is old timey sounding English meaning “in want of a question” or “lacking a question.” It’s a translation of a Latin phrase that was a translation of a Greek phrase that was a reference to a classical Greek style of debate/rhetorical game. The goal was to get somebody to agree to a basic premise by playing twenty questions, and they could only reply with yes or no. The questioner lost if they asked a question that had an unsupported underlying premise; they forgot to ask the question that would have established that fact.

Almost nobody uses it correctly (because classical education is almost non-existent these days), using it instead to mean “raises the question,” so look out for that.

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