[lit-ideas] Re: Who READS history?
- From: "Walter C. Okshevsky" <wokshevs@xxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2010 11:00:08 -0230
Must be nice to be retired and have all that free time. I appreciate being
presented with the historical record.
An oft-held discussion in Walter's undergrad phil. classes:
W: .... And if your conclusion is also in your premises, your argument cannot be
sound. It'll be circular. So you see that "begging the question" has a very
distinct, precise logical meaning and that's the sense of the expression I want
you to understand.
Pauline: But that's not the meaning that is used by most people, in the media,
on the street, politicians, in my favourite bar. You say we are free to be open
and critical in class ... community of inquiry and all that. OK, so who are
philosophers anyway to legislate the meanings in our language? And that begs
the question why they believe they can do that. Philosophy can't survive
without accomodating itself to popular culture. Can we go for a drink now?
And that's how I manage to stay young and frisky.
Cheers, Walter
Quoting Robert Paul <rpaul@xxxxxxxx>:
> I am always glad to have awakened the Lion of Mainz, for his
> pronouncements and refutations are unfailingly timely, informative, and
> a pleasure to read. Here he takes issue with the author of some
> anonymous remarks in Wikipedia, where it?s said, by Anon, that in the
> true and original sense of ?to beg the question,? ?beg? does not mean,
> ?petition,? ?ask for,? ?demand,? or even 'politely request,? but rather
> something closer to ?dodge,? or ?avoid: thus, in the following, ?You can
> trust Sally because she?s reliable,? the explanatory clause is simply
> the conclusion restated, and gets us no further; it simply avoids the
> question of whether or not she is trustworthy.
>
> Richard believes that Anon has made a serious mistake?whether it is a
> mistake in translation, or interpretation, or elucidation is not clear.
> In ?to beg the question,? ?beg,? according to him, means just what it
> would mean in ?I beg of you, spare that ancient elm.? It is hard to see
> what, in the ordinary senses of ?beg,? or ?request,? one would be asking
> for, if one were ?begging the question.? A better argument? One would,
> of course, wish for that; but it is the question of her trustworthiness
> that has not been answered. It has, to repeat, simply been dodged.
>
> Richard's point, one might suppose, is somehow etymological, not
> logical. He seems to think that Anon has chosen this ?new? sense of ?to
> beg,? because it would serve his or her purposes:
>
> *Begging to differ with Miss Wiki, whose manifold rectitude I
> nevertheless respect for the most part, but the word "beg" in the
> expression "begging the question" has not somehow miraculously lost its
> normal meaning of "asking for something" and acquired (by Wiki desired)
> the conveniently sought (i.e. begged) meaning of "dodge" or "avoid." I
> mean, her point is, ostensively, to demonstrate how "begging the
> question" manages to get to mean something like "dodging" or "avoiding
> the question." And instead she cuts to the chase, short-circuits the
> discussion, loops the logical chain, and finds her answer already
> implied in the question: "Why does 'begging the question' mean 'dodging
> the question'?--Why, because 'begging' means 'dodging' 'when used in
> this phrase.'"
>
> (Richard has a further objection, but I cannot make heads or tails of it.)
>
> He says,
>
> *?Begging simply means begging--*petitio* in the Latin has nothing
> dodging about it: it simply means that the speaker requests that his
> principle point be well taken.?
>
> I would have thought that ?Begging simply means begging,? was a nice
> illustration of the very form of argument being discussed, but in any
> case, who the speaker is said to be here is mysterious. A speaker,
> Sally, says, ?Fish live in the water because that?s where fish live,?
> only to have another speaker, Tom, reply, ?That begs the question.?
> Sally (who seems to be trying to ?make a point,? cannot be accusing
> herself of question begging, so it must be Tom who is [requesting] that
> his principle point be well-taken.? Yet so far, Tom has made no ?point.?
> He?s pointing out to Sally, a shortcoming in her defense of (we can
> imagine) her earlier attempt at explaining why fish live in water.
>
> Let me plagiarize some stuff from
>
> < http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/beg-the-question.html>
>
> in order to suggest that Anon isn?t just some poor, lonely, vegetarian nut.
>
> ??????????????????????????????????????????
>
> This is one of those rare phrases in which the meaning is more debated
> than the origin.
>
> The usage which has become common in recent years has a meaning
> something along the lines of 'prompt/raise the question', that is, 'beg
> that the question be asked'. This is usually seen in circumstances where
> something is described and then an explanation is sought. For example,
> this piece from a 2003 edition of the Jamaican newspaper The Gleaner:
>
> What we are saying here is that every 2 days a juvenile is arrested and
> it begs the question, "What is really happening to our parents?"
>
> This usage is understandable and has presumably come about by
> interpreting the 'beg' of 'beg the question' as 'request' or 'humbly
> submit'. This is the meaning of the word in the similar phrase 'beg to
> differ'. The original meaning was quite different though. To 'beg the
> question' was coined as a rather over-literal translation of the Latin
> phrase 'petitio principii'. The Latin version was itself a translation
> of Greek text 'en archei aiteisthai' taken from Aristotle's Prior
> Analytics. The phrase was known in English by at least 1581, at which
> date it was recorded by William Clarke:
>
> "Ffiij, I say this is still to begge the question."
>
> The logical constructs that Aristotle was describing were statements
> which assume the truth that one is attempting to prove. Those might be
> questions which have an assertion smuggled into them, like 'Why has
> England fewer trees per acre than any other country in Europe?'. Or,
> more commonly, the fallacious reasoning that we now usually call a
> 'circular argument'. For example, 'He must be speaking the truth because
> he never lies'. The 'truth' being assumed in advance isn't always so
> blatant. René Descartes' famous 'I think, therefore I am' can be said to
> be begging the question as he must exist before he can think - it is
> hardly a proof of anything to state 'I exist, therefore I am'.
>
> ??
>
> Most authorities now view the current 'raise the question' meaning as
> acceptable, even if that is a somewhat grudging recognition that the
> weight of numbers of those who use it that way is overwhelming. It is
> also suggested by some that the minority who know and understand the
> original version should avoid using it, unless they are amongst
> consenting adults, as they aren't likely to be understood. That would be
> an unfortunate route to take. Whatever we might prefer, it is very
> likely that the percentage of the population
> that knows, or cares, that they are using the phrase incorrectly will
> continue to decline.
>
> ??????????????????????????????????????????
>
>
> Robert Paul
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
> digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
>
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
