Talk:Petitio principii

What is this called?

Consider this exchange:

• How do you know the Bible is correct?
• Because it's the inspired word of God.

Possible follow-up questions are:

1. How do you know it's the inspired word of God?
2. Why is something inspired by God necessarily correct?

According to my understanding, response 1 is illustrating "begging the question". So what is response 2 illustrating? - dcljr 12:33, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

As far as I can tell, it's still begging the question - just one step removed from the relevant premise. Essentially, the reason that something inspired by God is necessarily correct is due to the definition of God's nature (perfect, omni-max or any similar description which eliminates the concept of fallibility), and when that definition of God comes from his inspired text, that represents circular reasoning. If the definition comes from another source (divine revelation - which is fancy talk of "personal opinion") it may still be circular as the ultimate claimed source is the same. In a nutshell: God's inspired message is infallible because he says he is...whether he says it in the Bible or directly to the individual. Sans Deity 16:02, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

Actually, the second one sounds more like a non sequitur. It is assumed that if the reader accepts the premise that the Bible is inspired by God, then the Bible is true. However, "It does not follow." --Kazim 19:25, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

That was my impression, too (when I thought about it some more after posting). The second question is basically asking for justification of the implication itself (why does inspired-by-God imply Bible-correct? — or, IOW: inspired-by-God implies what implies Bible-correct?), while the first is simply asking for justification for the stated premise (what implies inspired-by-God?). Seems like these should be illustrating two different things. OTOH, if you assume the nature of the answer to either will contain a circularity, then one could say they're both BTQ. I have to think (and read) about this some more... - dcljr 21:51, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

Latin name

Petitio principii is a redirect to Begging the question. I thought the convention was that the primary page for fallacies and whatnot should be under their formal Latin name, and that English synonyms should point to that. Did this one fall through the cracks or something? --13:35, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

Ah, here's the discussion.

--Arensb 13:48, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

I just made that change. I was Being Bold, but I probably shouldn't have been, since I really haven't looked through many of the "fallacies" pages... (See also the discussion on my talk page.) - dcljr 20:35, 5 April 2007 (CDT)

Near total rewrite

I've removed the following text:

For example, consider the following exchange:

Q: How do you know the Bible is correct?

A: Because it was written by God.

The answer begs the question, "How do you know that God wrote it?"

Note that if the answer to this question is, "Because it says so in the Bible," then this is an example of circular reasoning. If, however, the answer involves a discussion of how the Bible has been "confirmed" scientifically, archaeologically, historically, and/or prophetically, then depending on the evidence presented this may be a case of non-sequitur reasoning, cherry picking, or being just plain wrong.

I'll be back later to perhaps merge it back in, but I've never been happy with that example, since I don't think it actually demonstrates the concept we're trying to define here. - dcljr 14:30, 24 November 2008 (CST)