Why 'Begs the Question' Doesn't Mean What You Think it Does

By Roy Peter Clark

 I took a Logic class my freshman year in college and could not then -- or now -- tell you the difference between asyllogism and a window sill. That confession of logical incompetence begs the question … [Editor's note: Roy is about to misuse the phrase "beg the question" and needs a time out.]

My editor is right. Like so many other speakers and writers, I misuse the phrase "beg the question" when I really mean "raise the question."

What's the difference? If you don't already know the answer, there's probably little chance you will ever need to use "begs the question" correctly. So that, if you use the phrase at all, chances are you will use it incorrectly. I guess that means that you should never, ever, ever say or write: "begs the question." 

Hmm. That last paragraph is as logical as I usually get, so let me try to do better.

Roy's First Syllogism

Major Premise: People who make language mistakes are often dismissed or ridiculed.

Minor Premise: To say or write "begs the question" when you mean "raises the question" is a mistake.

Conclusion: If you use it that way, you may be dismissed or ridiculed.

It turns out that "begging the question" is a technical term of logic which has been appropriated for countless uses outside of logic. What then is its technical meaning?

There is more than one Web site devoted to correct and incorrect usages of "begging the question." I learned that "begging the question" is a logical fallacy, a form of "circular reasoning" in which the desired conclusion is planted in the premise to be argued.

An example: "That newspaper is biased in favor of liberals because it always leans to the left." In other words, it's biased because it's biased. The bear went over the mountain to see what it could see ... It saw another mountain.

I understand why those in the field of philosophy would not want to lose the technical term to the broader, more common usage. As one warrior on the Beg The QuestionWeb site writes:

"To beg the question does not mean 'to raise the question.' (e.g. 'It begs the question, why is he so dumb?') This is a common error of usage made by those who mistake the word 'question' in the phrase to refer to a literal question. Sadly, the error has grown more and more common with time, such that even journalists, advertisers, and major mass media entities have fallen prey to 'BTQ Abuse.'

"While descriptivists and other such laissez-faire linguists are content to allow the misconception to fall into the vernacular, it cannot be denied that logic and philosophy stand to lose an important conceptual label should the meaning of BTQ become diluted to the point that we must constantly distinguish between the traditional usage and the erroneous 'modern' usage. This is why we fight."

Which is not to say that begging the question does not have its charms, as is illustrated by this list of famous sayings by one of my childhood baseball idols Yogi Begger, I mean Yogi Berra:

• "This is like déjà vu all over again."
• "You can observe a lot by watching."
• "He must have made that [movie] before he died."
• "90 percent of the putts that are short don't go in." Which begs, uh, raises the question: What about the other 10 percent?

I heard this exchange on an episode of "Law & Order SVU" in which two detectives kneel over the body of a murder victim:

"Olivia: I've never seen him in my life.
"Detective: Which begs the question ...
"Olivia: Why was he trying to call me?"

Begging the question is not the only technical term that has expanded from popular usage, making its use more distracting and confusing than practical. Another is the word "moot," which is often used today to mean "of no practical importance; irrelevant." The word goes back at least to the 16th century and applied to hypothetical cases used by students of law. Three centuries later, the meaning had shifted from "hypothetical" or "academic" to "useless."

A problem arises when the meaning of a word shifts over time, but vestiges of the original meaning remain. That's the case with "begging the question," and it's clearly the case with a point that is declared "moot." Does it mean "subject to debate or argumentation," or does it mean "inconsequential"? In such cases, my inclination is to write what I mean clearly and avoid the ambiguities now inherent in these misused words.

It was easy enough to find more than 700 Google links to the comic misuse "the point is mute," which had nothing to do with your television remote. I could argue that pop singer Rick Springfield drove the final nail in the coffin of "moot" with this lyric from catchy classic "Jessie's Girl":

"You know I feel so dirty when they start talking cute/ 
"I wanna tell her that I love her but the point is probably moot."

Perhaps, in this case, "mute" would have been the preferable usage -- and the better rhyme.