Loaded question

Last updated

A loaded question is a form of complex question that contains a controversial assumption (e.g., a presumption of guilt). [1]

Contents

Such questions may be used as a rhetorical tool: the question attempts to limit direct replies to be those that serve the questioner's agenda. [2] The traditional example is the question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Whether the respondent answers yes or no, they will admit to having beaten their wife at some time in the past. Thus, these facts are presupposed by the question, and in this case an entrapment, because it narrows the respondent to a single answer, and the fallacy of many questions has been committed. [2] The fallacy relies upon context for its effect: the fact that a question presupposes something does not in itself make the question fallacious. Only when some of these presuppositions are not necessarily agreed to by the person who is asked the question does the argument containing them become fallacious. [2] Hence, the same question may be loaded in one context, but not in the other. For example, the previous question would not be loaded if it were asked during a trial in which the defendant had already admitted to beating his wife. [2]

This informal fallacy should be distinguished from that of begging the question, [3] which offers a premise whose plausibility depends on the truth of the proposition asked about, and which is often an implicit restatement of the proposition. [4]

Defense

A common way out of this argument is not to answer the question (e.g. with a simple 'yes' or 'no'), but to challenge the assumption behind the question. To use an earlier example, a good response to the question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" would be "I have never beaten my wife". [5] This removes the ambiguity of the expected response, therefore nullifying the tactic. However, the asker may respond to a challenge by accusing the one who answers of dodging the question.

An alternative manner of answering involves the Buddhist word mu, meaning "Neither yes nor no". This was illustrated in a story titled "Looking for Kelly Dahl": [6] [ unreliable source? ]

"Mu," said Kelly Dahl.
On one level mu means only yes, but on a deeper level of Zen it was often used by the master when the acolyte asked a stupid, unanswerable or wrongheaded question such as "Does a dog have the Buddha-nature?" The Master would answer only, "Mu," meaning—I say "yes" but mean "no," but the actual answer is: Unask the question.

Historical examples

Diogenes Laërtius wrote a brief biography of the philosopher Menedemus in which he relates that: [7]

[O]nce when Alexinus asked him whether he had left off beating his father, he said, "I have not beaten him, and I have not left off;" and when he said further that he ought to put an end to the doubt by answering explicitly yes or no, "It would be absurd," he rejoined, "to comply with your conditions, when I can stop you at the entrance." [8]

For another example, the 2009 referendum on corporal punishment in New Zealand asked: "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?" Murray Edridge, of Barnardos New Zealand, criticized the question as "loaded and ambiguous" and claimed "the question presupposes that smacking is a part of good parental correction". [9]

See also

Related Research Articles

Ad hominem, short for argumentum ad hominem, is a term that refers to several types of arguments, most of which are fallacious. Typically this term refers to a rhetorical strategy where the speaker attacks the character, motive, or some other attribute of the person making an argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself. This avoids genuine debate by creating a diversion to some irrelevant but often highly charged issue. The most common form of this fallacy is "A makes a claim x, B asserts that A holds a property that is unwelcome, and hence B concludes that argument x is wrong".

Eubulides of Miletus was a Greek philosopher of the Megarian school, a pupil of Euclid of Megara and a contemporary of Aristotle. He is famous for his logical paradoxes.

In common law systems that rely on testimony by witnesses, a leading question is a question that suggests a particular answer and contains information the examiner is looking to have confirmed. The use of leading questions in court to elicit testimony is restricted in order to reduce the ability of the examiner to direct or influence the evidence presented. Depending on the circumstances, leading questions can be objectionable or proper.

The relativist fallacy, also known as the subjectivist fallacy, is claiming that something is true for one person but not true for someone else, when in fact that thing is an objective fact. The fallacy rests on the law of noncontradiction. The fallacy applies only to objective facts, or what are alleged to be objective facts, rather than to facts about personal tastes or subjective experiences, and only to facts regarded in the same sense and at the same time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">False dilemma</span> Informal fallacy involving falsely limited alternatives

A false dilemma, also referred to as false dichotomy or false binary, is an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available. The source of the fallacy lies not in an invalid form of inference but in a false premise. This premise has the form of a disjunctive claim: it asserts that one among a number of alternatives must be true. This disjunction is problematic because it oversimplifies the choice by excluding viable alternatives, presenting the viewer with only two absolute choices when in fact, there could be many.

In classical rhetoric and logic, begging the question or assuming the conclusion is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument's premises assume the truth of the conclusion. A question-begging inference is valid, in the sense that the conclusion is as true as the premise, but it is not a valid argument.

A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning in the construction of an argument which may appear to be a well-reasoned argument if unnoticed. The term was introduced in the Western intellectual tradition by the Aristotelian De Sophisticis Elenchis.

Special pleading is an informal fallacy wherein one cites something as an exception to a general or universal principle, without justifying the special exception. It is the application of a double standard.

The genetic fallacy is a fallacy of irrelevance in which arguments or information are dismissed or validated based solely on their source of origin rather than their content. In other words, a claim is ignored or given credibility based on its source rather than the claim itself.

Argument from fallacy is the formal fallacy of analyzing an argument and inferring that, since it contains a fallacy, its conclusion must be false. It is also called argument to logic, the fallacy fallacy, the fallacist's fallacy, and the bad reasons fallacy.

A question is an utterance which serves as a request for information. Questions are sometimes distinguished from interrogatives, which are the grammatical forms typically used to express them. Rhetorical questions, for instance, are interrogative in form but may not be considered bona fide questions, as they are not expected to be answered.

A complex question, trick question, multiple question, fallacy of presupposition, or plurium interrogationum is a question that has a presupposition that is complex. The presupposition is a proposition that is presumed to be acceptable to the respondent when the question is asked. The respondent becomes committed to this proposition when they give any direct answer. When a presupposition includes an admission of wrongdoing, it is called a "loaded question" and is a form of entrapment in legal trials or debates. The presupposition is called "complex" if it is a conjunctive proposition, a disjunctive proposition, or a conditional proposition. It could also be another type of proposition that contains some logical connective in a way that makes it have several parts that are component propositions.

Presuppositionalism is an epistemological school of Christian apologetics that examines the presuppositions on which worldviews are based, and invites comparison and contrast between the results of those presuppositions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Homunculus argument</span> Informal fallacy

The homunculus argument is an informal fallacy whereby a concept is explained in terms of the concept itself, recursively, without first defining or explaining the original concept. This fallacy arises most commonly in the theory of vision. One may explain human vision by noting that light from the outside world forms an image on the retinas in the eyes and something in the brain looks at these images as if they are images on a movie screen. The question arises as to the nature of this internal viewer. The assumption here is that there is a "little man" or "homunculus" inside the brain "looking at" the movie.

Informal fallacies are a type of incorrect argument in natural language. The source of the error is not just due to the form of the argument, as is the case for formal fallacies, but can also be due to their content and context. Fallacies, despite being incorrect, usually appear to be correct and thereby can seduce people into accepting and using them. These misleading appearances are often connected to various aspects of natural language, such as ambiguous or vague expressions, or the assumption of implicit premises instead of making them explicit.

In the branch of linguistics known as pragmatics, a presupposition is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. Examples of presuppositions include:

A double-barreled question is an informal fallacy. It is committed when someone asks a question that touches upon more than one issue, yet allows only for one answer. This may result in inaccuracies in the attitudes being measured for the question, as the respondent can answer only one of the two questions, and cannot indicate which one is being answered.

An appeal to nature is an argument or rhetorical tactic in which it is proposed that "a thing is good because it is 'natural', or bad because it is 'unnatural'". It is generally considered to be a bad argument because the implicit (unstated) primary premise "What is natural is good" is typically irrelevant, having no cogent meaning in practice, or is an opinion instead of a fact.

An argument from authority, also called an appeal to authority, or argumentum ad verecundiam, is a form of argument in which a claim made by an authority on some topic is used as evidence to support one's own claim. Some assert that arguments from authority can be valid or fallacious, depending on circumstances such as whether the putative authority's expertise is relevant to the claim at hand, whether the authority is reliable, and whether there is widespread agreement among authorities on the claim, whereas others claim that appeals to authority are always fallacious.

References

  1. ↑ Bassham, Gregory (2004). Critical Thinking. McGraw-Hill. ISBN   9780072879599.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Douglas N. Walton, Informal logic: a handbook for critical argumentation, Cambridge University Press, 1989, ISBN   0-521-37925-3, pp. 36–37
  3. ↑ "Fallacy: Begging the Question". The Nizkor Project. Archived from the original on March 10, 2019. Retrieved January 22, 2008.
  4. ↑ Carroll, Robert Todd (31 July 2003). The Skeptic's Dictionary. John Wiley & Sons. p. 51. ISBN   0-471-27242-6.
  5. ↑ Layman, C. Stephen (2003). The Power of Logic. p. 158.
  6. ↑ 1996, Dan Simmons, "Looking for Kelly Dahl", The Year's Best Science Fiction, page 424
  7. ↑ Walton, Douglas N. (November 1999). "The fallacy of many questions: on the notions of complexity, loadedness and unfair entrapment in interrogative theory" (PDF). Argumentation. 13 (4): 379–383. doi:10.1023/A:1007727929716. S2CID   141720470. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-12-21. Retrieved 2020-04-25.
  8. ↑ Laertius, Diogenes (1853). The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. Translated by Yonge, Charles Duke. London: H.G. Bohn. p.  109. OCLC   3123020.
  9. ↑ "Anti-smacking debate goes to referendum". 3 News. June 15, 2009. Retrieved 2010-02-03.[ permanent dead link ]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.