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Petitio Principii (Begging the Question) |
| Description: | ||
| The words and phrases used to express the premisses are synonymous with the words and phrases used to express the conclusion. That is, the conclusion merely restates the premisses, with minor changes. | ||
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| Examples: | ||
| "No one is permitted to use the gymnasium on weekends, since people are permitted to use the gymnasium only on week days." | ||
| "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaida is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida." | ||
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--George W. Bush |
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| Discussion: | ||
| Petitio Principii is undeniably a common fallacy. I often see it in student papers, for example. In student papers it often takes the form of an argument by double negation: "My position is not false, therefore it is true." One characteristic of the Petitio Principii fallacy is that it is more likely to fool the person offering the argument than the person he or she is trying to persuade. When one is already persuaded of the truth of a position, it is easy to mistake a re-statement or re-affirmation of that position as an argument for that position. Perhaps the single most important thing that students should learn from a philosophy class is the difference between holding or believing a position and being able to justify that position, i.e. the difference between the position itself and the arguments for that position. The Petitio Principii fallacy can easily fool people who do not yet understand this distinction. | ||
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| Classification: A deductive Fallacy of Circularity. | ||
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| Source: Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations 5 (167b: 1 - 15). | ||
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