Perhaps this battle is already lost. This whole post may well be moot, but I'm still going to get my rant in anyway. Expanding on my discussion from yesterday about semantics and the meaning of one word in particular I want to look at phrase that is used almost exclusively incorrectly. It seems as though almost no one knows what “begs the question” means any more. Journalists equally misuse it which reinforces the misuse in the rest of us. It does NOT mean that a question naturally follows or must be asked as a result of the previous statements.
It is in fact a type of logical fallacy in which someone asks a statement (it doesn't have to be a question and usually isn't), then assumes the correct answer in order to prove that they get the correct answer. Wikipedia provides an example from a 2002 murder trial: “If these people are guilty and have shown no remorse for their crime, this can only mean that they are bad people, and this strengthens our conviction that they are guilty.” In this argument at the beginning it assumes that the people are guilty, and uses that assumption at the end to offer more “proof” that they're guilty.
Begging the question is basically a type of circular logic, and should be avoided. Thinking that “begs the question” means the same as “prompts the question” or “raises the question” is just wrong and should also be avoided.
