In this stylized form of debate, the proposition that the answerer undertakes to defend is called "the initial thing" (τὸ ἐξ ἀρχῆς, τὸ ἐν ἀρχῇ) and one of the rules of the debate is that the questioner cannot simply ask for it (that would be trivial and uninteresting). Aristotle's intended meaning is closely tied to the type of dialectical argument he discusses in his Topics, book VIII: a formalized debate in which the defending party asserts a thesis that the attacking party must attempt to refute by asking yes-or-no questions and deducing some inconsistency between the responses and the original thesis.
The original phrase used by Aristotle from which begging the question descends is: τὸ ἐξ ἀρχῆς (or sometimes ἐν ἀρχῇ) αἰτεῖν, "asking for the initial thing".
The phrase begging the question originated in the 16th century as a mistranslation of the Latin petitio principii, which in turn was a mistranslation of the Greek for "assuming the conclusion". Sometimes it is confused with " dodging the question", an attempt to avoid it, or perhaps more often begging the question means simply leaving the question unanswered. In modern vernacular usage, however, begging the question is often used to mean "raising the question" or "suggesting the question". This often occurs in an indirect way such that the fallacy's presence is hidden, or at least not easily apparent.
It is a type of circular reasoning: an argument that requires that the desired conclusion be true. In classical rhetoric and logic, begging the question or assuming the conclusion ( Latin: petitio principii) is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument's premises assume the truth of the conclusion, instead of supporting it.įor example, the statement "Green is the best color because it is the greenest of all colors" claims that the color green is the best because it is the greenest – which it presupposes is the best. Bust of Aristotle, whose Prior Analytics contained an early discussion of this fallacy
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