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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JDowling" data-source="post: 2150817" data-attributes="member: 12596">just to raise a point about all the "begging the question" finger pointing in this thread:There are many forms of "begging the question" and most of them are harmless.  All deductive arguments are "begging the question".P -> QP---QYou are asserting the conclusion in the premisses (by god, that's nearly the very definition of a valid argument! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" />).  One way that people try to solve this problem is to say that you need to assert the conclusion in one premiss instead of more than one (however: P.  Therefore P. is logically sound/valid, etc and a perfectly good argument, it just doesn't say much interesting).Another way to escape the conclusion that all arguments are question-begging is to say that question begging is an ontological matter.  This allows the cogito to escape the charge of question-begging.Also, most if not all definitions of things end up being question-begging, but not necessarily in a vicious way.I think after you examine the literature and arguments around it you might decide that question-begging is rarely vicious and is about as good a counter to most arguments as "reasoning in a vaccume" is, as you really can't ever take everything in the universe into account for any argument, so there's always a chance that you're leaving something important out.So, anyway, carry on, but question-begging isn't a very good objection to most arguments.</blockquote>

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