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The Fallacy of Begging the Question: A Reply to Barker

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

David H. Sanford
David H. Sanford
Affiliation:
Duke University
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Type
Notes—Discussions
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 16 , Issue 3 , September 1977 , pp. 485 - 498
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1977

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References

1 Barker, John A., “The Fallacy of Begging the Question,” Dialogue, 15 (1976), pp. 241–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarSanford, David H., “Begging the Question,” Analysis, 32 (1972), pp. 197–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Page references are to Barker's article unless otherwise indicated. I am grateful to Professor Barker for sending me a copy of his paper prior to publication and for answering some questions about it.

2 I shall not completely neglect my own defense but neither shall 1 point out every case in which my criticism of Barker's view undermines his criticism of mine. There is logical room for accounts of begging the question different from both mine and Barker's. For a discussion of some of these, see Woods, John and Walton, Douglas, «Petitio Principii,» Synthese, 31 (1975), pp. 107–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 This definition, as I formulate it, covers only valid arguments. Barker says that “as eveey theorist agrees, an argument must be at least valid in order to be question-begging” (p. 244). If “valid” means “deductively valid,” as it does here, this claim is error. Some theorists disagree about whether certain inductive arguments beg the question. See Swinburne, Richard (ed.), The Justification oj Induction (Oxford University Press, 1974), Chapter VIII, for exchanges betweenGoogle ScholarBlack, Max and Peter, Achinstein on this topic and Black's Cavaets and Critiques (Cornell University Press, 1975Google Scholar), Chapter 11, for his most recent contribution to the debate. Barker goes on to say that the “detection of validity itself depends in part on the possibility of detecting certain identities between the conclusion (or elements thereof) and the premises (or elements thereof)” (pp. 244–45). He takes this as showing that the problems of formulating necessary and sufficient conditions for propositional identity are not special problems for a definition of begging the question in terms of propositional identity. This is another error. One needs only a sufficient condition of propositional identity, and not a condition both sufficient and necessary, to formulate both conditions sufficient for argument-validity and conditions sufficient for an arguments being of a certain invalid form. Since every argument is of some invalid form, not being of an invalid form is not necessary for argument-validity. Logicians do not give syntactical conditions both sufficient and necessary for argument-validity, although some authors of introductory logic textbooks mistakenly suggest other-wise.

4 Some theologians thus argue that God knows nothing by means of inference. See Aquinas, St. Thomas, Summa Contra Gentiles, I. 57Google Scholar.

5 See the final paragraph of Woods and Walton, “Petitio Principii,” for a brief discussion of standardization.

6 The premisses are not logically independent, since each is entailed by the negation of the other. If the conclusion is a contingent statement, however, it is always possible to formulate logically independent statements which together entail it. For example,

p v (q & r)

p v ~ r

therefore, p.

So long as the component statements are logically independent of each other, the two premisses are logically independent and neither by itself entails the conclusion, although their conjunction is logically equivalent to the conclusion. This shows the uselessness of stipulating that a conjunctive statement is one equivalent to a conjunction of logically independent conjuncts, since every contingent statement turns out to be conjunctive on this stipulation.

7 When 1 discuss the disjunctive syllogism manoeuvre in “Begging the Question” (p. 198), my actual example of an argument of the form ‘q, ~ q v p, therefore p’ has the unfortunate feature that the conclusion entails the first premiss. Barker treats this example with an intricate discussion of what he calls “presuppositional compounds” (pp. 249–52) and he qualifìes his conditions to allow that some valid, multi-premiss arguments which involve presuppositional compounds beg the question even though no single premiss or premiss-conjunct entails the conclusion (p. 254). 1 do not discuss this qualification more fully here because, although it does rule out some intellectually disrespectable manoeuvres for evading the change of question-begging, it still leaves plenty of possibilities untouched.

8 It is our disagreement on these points, I think, rather than my failure to accept Barker's general characterization of a fallacy, which explains why he claims that my view of begging the question “does violence to the very notion of a fallacy«(p. 248) and” is not coherent with the very notion of a fallacy» (p. 255).

9 I take the phrase “Official tradition” from Anderson, Alan Ross and Belnap, Nuel D. Jr, Entailment (Princeton University Press, 1975), p. 31Google Scholar.

10 A very special case of disjunctivesyllogism with a truth-functional dis-junctive premiss is regarded as valid. See Entailment, Section 16.2.3.

11 To cover the remote possibility that a disjunctive syllogism have a conclusion such as that arguments of the disjunctive syllogism form are valid and that someone accepts the argument as valid only because he accepts the conclusion, another requirement for non-question-begging can be added, namely that one must not accept an argument as valid only because one accepts the conclusion of the argument. This sort of requirement is more pertinent to inductive justifications of inductive procedures.

12 This sort of condition Stephenson, G. H. calls ontic on pp. 384–85 of his “Entailment, Negation, and Disjunctive Syllogism,”Google ScholarPhilosophical Studies, 27.6 (June 1975), pp. 377–87, an article devoted to criticism ofCrossRefGoogle ScholarBarker, John A., “Relevance Logic, Classical Logic, and Disjunctive Syllogism,” same issue, pp. 361–66. Barker discussesGoogle ScholarCurley, E. M., “Lewis and Entailment,” Philosophical Studies, 23.3 (April 1972), pp. 198–204. My attitude toward disjunctive syllogism is generally in accord with Curley'sCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 This is what Stephenson would call an epislemic conditional. lt is properly so called, I suppose, because it is a conditional concerning epistemic matters. There is no more reason, so far as I can see, for distinguishing a special epistemic use of ‘if’ in epistemic conditionals than there is for distinguishing a special olfactory use of ‘if in conditionals concerning olfactory matters.

14 This mode of treatment, which derives from the work of W. E. Johnson, should be distinguished from attempts to provide an alternative to the Official tradition account of entailment by refererce to epistemic matters. In “Entailment and Deducibility,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 59 (1958–1959), pp. 238–39Google Scholar, T. J. Smiley suggests that behind Johnson's theory is essentially the same point as that made by P. T. Geach and G. H. von Wright in their theories of entailment. I believe that this suggestion is misleading. “Epistemic conditions of inference” (Johnson's phrase) can be used to supplement rather than to revise the Official tradition requirements of formal validity.