Week 3, Q. 2
I'm going to discuss "begging the question" under violating the principle of rational discussion.
Haha I think this fallacy is kind of funny because it's extremely common, and I think I notice it in young kids a lot. It is basically just circular reasoning, where the beginning concludes to the end and the end concludes to the beginning. Many of the examples you see have to do with God, such as "God created the world because it says so in the Bible." Too often in the media and in everyday talking, people use the term "beg to question" to mean "raise the question." That is incorrect.
Beg the question is when your arguments virtually have the same meaning and the proof provided is basically restating of the premise.Therefore, the sentence has begged the question.
I think an example of my own life where I've done this is in highschool. I thought that my teacher hated me or had some crazy idea in her mind about disliking me and that she was the reason for my bad grades. I told her, in more or less words, "you're grading me unfairly. I know this because no matter how good my papers are, you never give me higher than a C." This argument is pretty circular because I'm basing my argument on the fact that he grades unfairly and that my work is in the "good" category. This can be justified on her end, (which it was) by showing the rubric by which she graded and put me in the category I belonged in.
Your example reminds me of my english 1b class last year here at San Jose State. Personally, I believe that I write pretty well and I proof read some essays of students who were getting B's and A's on their papers. It was unfair because these essays were very unclear and had a few spelling and grammer related errors. I was also getting C's and I know that my essays were far better than those I had proof read. I also wanted to see the rubric which my teacher was using because I knew there was no way that my paper should be in the category it fell in.
ReplyDeleteYour example is almost what goes on in my head whenever I get a grade that I don't want. It may be something that goes on in everyone's head if they believe that they tried in the homework assignment. It seems unfair, but you have to remind yourself that the professor grades a lot of papers every semester, they have seen a huge array of essays; good and bad. But I enjoyed your summary as well. Honestly I had trouble understanding what the textbook had to say about the fallacy. And now that you mention it more clearly, I notice it more and more around me.
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