Off TopicAre you a QOTWer? Do you want to start a thread that isn't a direct answer to the current QOTW? Then this place, gentle poster, is your friend.
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rob, Sun 1 Apr 2001, 1:00)
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Pedantry ahoy!www.b3ta.com/questions/peeves/post155924.
The relevant bit is this:
"Begging the question" (petitio principii) does NOT mean "raising the question". Rather, to beg the question is to commit the fallacy of presupposing in the premises of an argument that which is to be shown in the conclusion.
Allow me to demonstrate. "I think, therefore I am," says Descartes. The argument here would look like this:
P1: I am thinking
P2: Thinking things exist
C: Therefore I exist.
The problem here is that, if the existence of "I" is the conclusion of the argument, it really oughtn't to be in the major premise. The argument is, therefore, invalid; and the reason it is invalid is that it begs the question. "Begging the question", in other words, doesn't really have a great deal to do with asking anything.
(For the nonce, what Descartes should have said is:
P1: There is thinking going on
P2: Thinking things exist
C: Therefore I exist...
... except that he shouldn't. This argument is invalid because now the problem is that the "I" has come from nowhere. The point is that "I think, therefore I am" is a crock whichever way you look at it.)
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Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 12:11,
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