[WAYYY OT] Begs the question

[les]

On Tue, 2011-03-22 at 10:34 +0000, Marko Vojinovic wrote:
> On Tuesday 22 March 2011 03:37:15 Joe Zeff wrote:
> > On 03/21/2011 05:49 PM, Tom Horsley wrote:
> > > Apparently Nero Wolfe is willing to make contact with
> > > the expression "begs the question" :-).
> > 
> > If you read it carefully, you'll see that he's not misusing it; he's
> > pointing out that whoever Whipple is referring to as "they" are assuming
> > that "it has a basis" without evidence.  If he were misusing it, he'd
> > have said, "That begs the question, why do they think it has a basis?"
> 
> Now you've got me curious about this. :-)
> 
> If I understand correctly, you say that the original quote (that Tom Horsly 
> gave)
> 
>    "That begs the question. I'll try again. Why do they think it has a basis?"
> 
> is correct usage, while
> 
>    "That begs the question, why do they think it has a basis?"
> 
> is incorrect. If I assume that the "I'll try again." sentence in the middle is 
> irrelevant in this context, the only difference I see is comma vs. period.
> 
> So, all in all, are you actually complaining about punctuation usage?
> 
> As English is not my native language, I tend to understand the meaning more 
> from the context than from the syntax, so pardon my ignorance in this. Can you 
> explain why is the period-sentence correct while the comma-sentence is 
> incorrect?
> 
> The way I see it, both sentences convey the same meaning, and I don't 
> understand why the usage of comma over a period in this case makes the 
> statement wrong. This may be some subtlety of English that I am not aware of, 
> so I'd be grateful for an explanation. :-)
> 
> Best, :-)
> Marko
> 

Hi, Marko,
	I will attempt an answer from my own understanding.  I may be somewhat
in error, but I think it will help you understand the point, and others
will always be helpful in clarifying...

	In a debate (argument if you are less formal) a form of establishing
your point is to say something that you believe is supported by the
facts without examining the underlying facts too closely.
	An example of this:
	Social security is underfunded.  That begs the question of what do we
do to reduce the payout of social security.

	The first statement is in doubt because there are experts on all sides
of this statement that do not agree that social security is under
funded.  But by stating it as a fact, the debater can turn the question
so that a solution for a non-existent state of affairs becomes the
topic, rather than social security itself which should be being
discussed.  Thus the debater has distracted the audience and possibly
altered the course of the debate from the desired discussion to make a
personal point.

	In common use and informal discussion, more correctly one could say:

	Social Security appears underfunded, begging the question of "What do
we do to fix social security?"

	The difference is that the first is an intentional misdirection, done
to deliberately lead the discussion to a desired conclusion without
actually examining the facts.  

	Colleges have formalized the debate, and attempted to establish rules
of discourse, means of reducing the impact of such attempts at
misdirection and misrepresentation with logical precision, at least as
logical as one can get given the workings of various persons mental
capacities, and given that various people have various backgrounds
presenting facts to them that may forever be unknown to the large
majority, either through intentional classification and secrecy or
through lack of direct in-depth knowledge of the subject.

	In formal debates, one is supposed to rely on factual material, explain
ones conclusions based upon the facts and not bully, mislead or
misdirect the discussion.

	They have given names to the various tricks that manipulators will pull
on the public to control the debate.  The one under discussion here
relates to a statement that may or may not be true being presented as
absolute truth, then directing attention from the facts to a desired
direct conclusion which may be totally the wrong thing to do, but is a
direction the debater wishes to go.

	I hope this helps.

Regards,
Les H