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Re: [OM] [OT] In depth SUV scientific based analysis (was TotallyOT

Subject: Re: [OM] [OT] In depth SUV scientific based analysis (was TotallyOT
From: Bob Whitmire <bwhitmire@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 27 May 2011 10:03:14 -0400
I'll be sure to get it. Always enjoy reading about fallacies. And even though I 
sometimes can't resist the urge to push buttons and pull chains, I do have my 
own set of language bugaboos. Right now it's "Beg the question." My wife and I 
argue about this one all the time. 

There's a character on a popular TV crime show, NCIS: Los Angeles, whose name 
is Henrietta, also known as Hettie. She is played by the talented and 
infinitely durable Linda Hunt. Hettie, to say the least, is one superbly 
intelligent creature, not to mention knowledgeable about many esoteric things. 
Two or three times now she's used the phrase "this begs the question" in the 
sense that "this demands an answer" or variations thereof. That's wrong. Not to 
be pedantic (ouch!), but begging the question properly means something more 
like circular reasoning.

I'll opine to Esteemed Wife that Hettie is wrong, and she'll lecture me about 
the purpose of language being to communicate, and if it communicates, how can 
it be wrong? She believes in organic language, and if no one except you and me 
and Chris and a few others on this list know the real meaning of beg the 
question, then the much more common (and incorrect) definition will come to be 
the correct definition. I allow as how she's probably right, but that doesn't 
make it right.

She smirks, but then I point out that regardless of what's right and what's 
wrong and what's organic and evolutionary, etc., a character such as Hettie 
would _never_ misuse beg the question. In fact, she would correct in no 
uncertain terms any of her people who did so misuse it.

--Bob

 
On May 27, 2011, at 6:36 AM, Andrew Fildes wrote:

> You need my book - 'A Complete Fallacy' - available for Kindle on Amazon 
> right now!  :-)

-- 
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