On Tue, 2011-03-22 at 10:34 +0000, Marko Vojinovic wrote: > On Tuesday 22 March 2011 03:37:15 Joe Zeff wrote: > > On 03/21/2011 05:49 PM, Tom Horsley wrote: > > > Apparently Nero Wolfe is willing to make contact with > > > the expression "begs the question" :-). > > > > If you read it carefully, you'll see that he's not misusing it; he's > > pointing out that whoever Whipple is referring to as "they" are assuming > > that "it has a basis" without evidence. If he were misusing it, he'd > > have said, "That begs the question, why do they think it has a basis?" > > Now you've got me curious about this. :-) > > If I understand correctly, you say that the original quote (that Tom Horsly > gave) > > "That begs the question. I'll try again. Why do they think it has a basis?" > > is correct usage, while > > "That begs the question, why do they think it has a basis?" > > is incorrect. If I assume that the "I'll try again." sentence in the middle is > irrelevant in this context, the only difference I see is comma vs. period. > > So, all in all, are you actually complaining about punctuation usage? > > As English is not my native language, I tend to understand the meaning more > from the context than from the syntax, so pardon my ignorance in this. Can you > explain why is the period-sentence correct while the comma-sentence is > incorrect? > > The way I see it, both sentences convey the same meaning, and I don't > understand why the usage of comma over a period in this case makes the > statement wrong. This may be some subtlety of English that I am not aware of, > so I'd be grateful for an explanation. :-) > > Best, :-) > Marko > Hi, Marko, I will attempt an answer from my own understanding. I may be somewhat in error, but I think it will help you understand the point, and others will always be helpful in clarifying... In a debate (argument if you are less formal) a form of establishing your point is to say something that you believe is supported by the facts without examining the underlying facts too closely. An example of this: Social security is underfunded. That begs the question of what do we do to reduce the payout of social security. The first statement is in doubt because there are experts on all sides of this statement that do not agree that social security is under funded. But by stating it as a fact, the debater can turn the question so that a solution for a non-existent state of affairs becomes the topic, rather than social security itself which should be being discussed. Thus the debater has distracted the audience and possibly altered the course of the debate from the desired discussion to make a personal point. In common use and informal discussion, more correctly one could say: Social Security appears underfunded, begging the question of "What do we do to fix social security?" The difference is that the first is an intentional misdirection, done to deliberately lead the discussion to a desired conclusion without actually examining the facts. Colleges have formalized the debate, and attempted to establish rules of discourse, means of reducing the impact of such attempts at misdirection and misrepresentation with logical precision, at least as logical as one can get given the workings of various persons mental capacities, and given that various people have various backgrounds presenting facts to them that may forever be unknown to the large majority, either through intentional classification and secrecy or through lack of direct in-depth knowledge of the subject. In formal debates, one is supposed to rely on factual material, explain ones conclusions based upon the facts and not bully, mislead or misdirect the discussion. They have given names to the various tricks that manipulators will pull on the public to control the debate. The one under discussion here relates to a statement that may or may not be true being presented as absolute truth, then directing attention from the facts to a desired direct conclusion which may be totally the wrong thing to do, but is a direction the debater wishes to go. I hope this helps. Regards, Les H -- users mailing list users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
