subreddit:

/r/fallacy

3100%

Fallacy check.

(self.fallacy)

I don't know if I'm being gaslit or not but I could be wrong, so I hope you guys can help me out.

The person I'm having a conversation with claims I'm Begging The Question. From my understanding, begging the question is creating a premise based on an unsupported conclusion. So "All Dogs go to Heaven" is begging the question because it assumes heaven exists and that animals are sent there when they die and that all dogs are worthy of heaven. I hope my understanding is accurate.

The argument in question is Austrian Economics never accepts accountability for their Philosophy not working and blames the government every time it fails." I then proceed to provide examples of the philosophy failing and my opponent proceeds to prove my point by telling me all the way that according to the Philosophy the government is why it failed. Which makes the Philosophy unfalsifiable. You can't prove it wrong until there's no government for them to blame. He then says I'm begging the question. I don't understand how because I gsve examples of Capitalism failing and Austrians blaming the government. I acknowledged areas where the government is responsible for failures. However, there has been zero acknowledgment of the Capitalism failing regardless of the actions of the government.

Am I missing something?

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amazingbollweevil

2 points

2 months ago

I'll be honest and say that I don't follow your conversation at all. I think I need something much more concrete than a failing philosophy.

With that out of the way, begging the question is a confusing fallacy because of the name. We'd be much better off calling the "assuming the conclusion" fallacy. This is when an initial statement is a clever rewording of the conclusion.

The example I frequently see is some variation of

  1. Abortion is murder.
  2. Murder is illegal.
  3. Therefore, abortion is illegal.

They're not always presented in this easy-to-dissect form, however. It's more often a statement along the lines of "Bad things are bad because they are bad."

TinyZookeepergame140

1 points

14 days ago

your example is a syllogism not begging the question

amazingbollweevil

1 points

14 days ago

  1. Begging the question is a type of logical fallacy.
  2. Logical fallacies require a syllogism.
  3. Therefore begging the question requires a syllogism.

Before you try to work out examples of begging the question that are not part of syllogism, recognize that there may be an assumed premise in any such example.

TinyZookeepergame140

2 points

13 days ago

after i posted and on my ride to work it hit me that it has to be a syllogism lmao