Question

What does it mean to say that a rational argumentation in a civilized society takes place in an "interactive" environment?

When does an argument become fallacious in a way that it "begs the question"?

Answer 1

• Begs the question is a term that comes from formal logic. It’s a translation of the Latin phrase petitio principii, and it's used to mean that someone has made a conclusion based on a premise that lacks support. It can be a premise that's independent from the conclusion or in a simpler form, a premise that’s just a restatement of the conclusion itself.
• This fallacy is committed when a person merely assumes what he is attempting to prove, or when the premise of an argument actually depends upon its conclusion.
• Begging the question is a fallacious form of argument. Therefore, to beg the question is to argue fallaciously.
• Any form of argument in which the conclusion occurs as one of the premisses. More generally, a chain of arguments in which the final conclusion is a premiss of one of the earlier arguments in the chain. Still more generally, an argument begs the question when it assumes any controversial point not conceded by the other side.
• Example;To cast abortion as a solely private moral question,…is to lose touch with common sense: How human beings treat one another is practically the definition of a public moral matter. Of course, there are many private aspects of human relations, but the question whether one human being should be allowed fatally to harm another is not one of them. Abortion is an inescapably public matter.
  
• Here's anpther example of a simple argument that begs the question. This one just restates the conclusion as a basis for the conclusion:
• Chocolate is delicious because it's yummy. Again, the question is What's the support for your premise? If I didn't accept that chocolate is delicious, I'm not going to accept that it's yummy just because you say it's delicious. They're the same thing. It’s circular reasoning. Stop begging the question and make a better argument.
• Begging the question is a very strange fallacy because it is actually valid.Normally fallacies are not valid; the fact that their conclusion does not follow from the premise(s) is what makes them fallacies.
• But, oddly, with begging the question the conclusion does follow from the premise (because it is simply a restatement of the premise). So, the argument, “Evolution must be true because it is a fact,” is valid. But if it is valid, then why is it considered a fallacy?
  
• The answer would seem to be that begging the question is a fallacy because it is arbitrary. Circular arguments of this kind are not useful because anyone who denies the conclusion would also deny the premise (since the conclusion is essentially the same as the premise).
• So, the argument, “Evolution must be true because it is a fact,” while technically valid, is fallacious because the arguer has merely assumed what he is trying to prove.
• Arbitrary assumptions are not to be used in logical reasoning because we could equally well assume the exact opposite. It would be just as legitimate to argue, “Evolution cannot be true because it is false.
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