Begging Your Question

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I still remember when I first consciously heard it.  The phrase “begging the question,” I mean.  I was a doctoral student at the time and one thing you do in grad school is ask a lot of questions.  I asked my advisor what the phrase meant.  “Asking a question when you’ve already assumed the answer,” he replied.  I’ve been writing quite a lot about feedback loops these days, and this was yet another of them.  Begging the question, in other words, is a fallacy where the asker isn’t seeking an answer, but is attempting to persuade another of a pre-decided outlook.  The concept is subtle, but important.  That’s why it disturbs me that most academics these days use the phrase “begs the question” when they mean “asks the question.”

I’m afraid I don’t have statistics here, but I read academese all day long—it’s my job.  I can’t footnote where this occurs but I can attest that it happens all the time.  Whenever I read “begs the question” I stop and reason it out.  Does the author mean “begs” or “raises” or “poses” or “asks” the question?  Begging a question isn’t the same as raising or posing or asking it since the latter three indicate an answer is being sought.  Precision in thinking is difficult work.  It can give you a headache.  We all fail sometimes.  Perhaps that’s why we eschew it, as a society.  It’s much easier to beg the question.  Still, doesn’t that mean this valuable concept is in danger of losing its, well, value?

I realize that posing such a question makes me sound like one of those old guys who says, “back when I was a youngster…” but the fact is the educational system in the United Kingdom made you ask lots of questions.  In a way that’s unheard of over here, where money assures your credentials, I knew two students who failed out of the doctoral program at Edinburgh when I was there.  One of them an American.  It wasn’t just a matter of laying your money on the barrelhead and walking out the door with a diploma.  I’ve read certified copies of dissertations (not from institutions in the United Kingdom) where Zeus was spelled “Zues” (throughout) and the biblical seer was called “Danial.”  Now, I suppose that raises the question of the value of degrees where you don’t even need to spell your subject’s name correctly.  Begging the question is a fallacy, not a synonym for asking.  And I know that if your thesis begs a question then you’re barking up the wrong tree, but that won’t stop you from landing a job in the academy.

I’m Saying Nothing

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It used to be called argumentum e silentio, the argument from silence.  It didn’t take very long into my post-graduate reading to learn that arguments from silence were very rarely admitted in the academy as any kind of evidence at all.  In fact, argumenta e silentio are generally considered a logical fallacy.  The idea is fairly simple: an argument from silence is when a source (often an ancient one) doesn’t mention something.  That lack of mention is sometimes used to argue for the absence of the thing not mentioned.  For example, some first century writers in the region of Roman Palestine did not mention Jesus of Nazareth.  This has led some to suggest that Jesus never existed.  The evidence is an absence of evidence on the part of certain important historical figures.  There are obviously lots of problems with this.  I’m a modern person and there are plenty of people I never write about.  It doesn’t mean that I don’t know who they are (although in my case, it might!).
 
Why am I concerned about arguments from silence?  Lately I’ve noticed quite a few scholarly tomes coming out on the topic of silence.  I’m not referring to Susan Cain’s excellent Quiet, but to scholarly monographs that explore the silence in ancient texts about certain subjects.  In my more curmudgeonly moments, I feel that perhaps when we have nothing left to explore but what a text doesn’t say maybe we’ve explored that text enough.  Younger scholars, casting about for something new to say about the Bible, look to what ancient sources don’t say to give them a research topic.  Back in my own academic days you’d receive a stout scholarly rap upon the pate for even including an argument from silence in your thesis.  Now you can write entire books about what someone didn’t say.  What’s more, you’ll likely find a publisher.
 
I’m at times a bit fearful for the future.  Although my academic work approached the Bible critically it wasn’t because I didn’t like or didn’t respect the Bible.  Hey, it’s far more famous than I’ll ever be, and in fact, more people have heard of it than have even heard of Trump with his endless tweets. No, the Bible is an endlessly fascinating book.  It’s just that if you can’t find something to say about it, why write about what ancients didn’t say?  Maybe it’s time to move on to a sacred text that hasn’t been probed for a couple of millennia.  I have no vested personal interest in this, having been excluded from the academy by biblical literalists and having had the rest assent to that decision by silence.  Ah, but there’s the rub.  That phrase, by the way, doesn’t occur in the Bible.  I wonder if that’s significant.

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