> This is a point stressed, even more strongly than I’m comfortable putting it, by Schiller (1912) in his book, Formal Logic. In particular, see chapter 16, section 9, titled, “Is the syllogism a petitio principii?” Schiller’s conclusion is: yes; all valid arguments in standard syllogistic form are question-begging. This is a radical claim, and I’m not necessarily endorsing it. However, I think if you examine the foundations of formal logic more carefully, you’ll catch a suspicious whiff of circularity in the way it operates. The passage from Schiller is less than 4 pages, and can probably be found online. Have a look. More generally, I’d encourage you to look into the works of those who fall outside the mainstream analytic traditions, especially pragmatists like Schiller and James.
This is a really excellent post as it gets at the heart of many annoying aspects of arguing.
In common language, "begging the question" seems to have a totally different meaning than the dictionary definition, but Silas did a great job of connecting these ideas. Commonly, "begs the question" just means that someone has a potential counter argument they thought of, that they would like to be addressed -- totally reasonable and should be encouraged! However, "begs the question" is sometimes used as a thought-terminating-cliche, which is nonsense, as Silas points out, because the rational and relevant implications of an argument depend on the context.
Yakiimo's point about arguments being relativistic is obviously true, not so much in the strictly logical framing here, but in the more general sense that linguistic meaning is always contextual and relative. Words can never stand on their own, they always require relations to other words. Only from these relations do words acquire meaning at all. Thus, since arguments are composed of words, it's trivial to see that arguments are also relational and contextual.
I feel like this is sort of Scooby-Doo style "it was actually Old Man Pragmatism all along!" kind of situation.
Old Man Pragmatism really gets around!
> This is a point stressed, even more strongly than I’m comfortable putting it, by Schiller (1912) in his book, Formal Logic. In particular, see chapter 16, section 9, titled, “Is the syllogism a petitio principii?” Schiller’s conclusion is: yes; all valid arguments in standard syllogistic form are question-begging. This is a radical claim, and I’m not necessarily endorsing it. However, I think if you examine the foundations of formal logic more carefully, you’ll catch a suspicious whiff of circularity in the way it operates. The passage from Schiller is less than 4 pages, and can probably be found online. Have a look. More generally, I’d encourage you to look into the works of those who fall outside the mainstream analytic traditions, especially pragmatists like Schiller and James.
https://www.lanceindependent.com/p/moral-realism-and-the-sacrificial
This is a really excellent post as it gets at the heart of many annoying aspects of arguing.
In common language, "begging the question" seems to have a totally different meaning than the dictionary definition, but Silas did a great job of connecting these ideas. Commonly, "begs the question" just means that someone has a potential counter argument they thought of, that they would like to be addressed -- totally reasonable and should be encouraged! However, "begs the question" is sometimes used as a thought-terminating-cliche, which is nonsense, as Silas points out, because the rational and relevant implications of an argument depend on the context.
Yakiimo's point about arguments being relativistic is obviously true, not so much in the strictly logical framing here, but in the more general sense that linguistic meaning is always contextual and relative. Words can never stand on their own, they always require relations to other words. Only from these relations do words acquire meaning at all. Thus, since arguments are composed of words, it's trivial to see that arguments are also relational and contextual.