Begs the Question is a very commonly misused phrase. People tend to believe it means something like "makes you think of the question", "suggests a question" or "raises the question". It does not.

Instead, it's a fallacy, or some may say a rhetorically deceptive tactic, related to asking a question with an assumption embedded in the question itself, without the assumption ever having been substantiated.

I figure people around here may need this kind of instruction, and it's such a common problem that there is an entire website dedicated to dealing with it's proper use:

http://begthequestion.info/

Which begs the question… sorry, I had to do it. Logical fallacies are very important to know about and to be able to spot and yet being able to wield them effectively as tools or tropes and not fallacies is a skill not unlike an art—such as double negatives or the rarest, double positives. Mind you, when one gets caught up in the grammar, syntax and formal logic of an argument that's casual or even gen span I… well, that's just retarded.

On the subject of logical fallacies, I think it would be worthwhile for people to actually take classes on them in high school. Not sure if this is an actual thing, the damn curriculum changes every two years in Canuckistan.

That being said, RC found this cool site about fallacies. I like it because it's easy to understand and has good examples for each fallacy.

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That sounds pretty nazi to me. I mean, words can and often have more than one meaning, so why couldn't expressions also have multiple meanings? Especially so when the 'new' meaning appears to be perfectly semantically coherent.

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This.... does not belong in gen spam.....

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EVERYTHING BELONGS IN GEN SPAM. SUBMIT OR BE PUNISHED.

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So, check it. Like, half the potency and shit of English or whatever is the bountiful to the point of nigh infiteness of the gamut or elsewise breadth of possible forms a thought can take coupled, conjugally, with the abundance of homonyms, homophones, and just homos in general.

English is gay. In every way that matters. HOT

Interesting that people are focused on the logical fallacy idea, which actually has nothing to do with the point about getting this correct. The point was, the term refers to a particular logical fallacy, and NOT to the idea of "raising a question" which is how it is often used by those that simply have heard the phrase but don't know what it means. It could refer to ice cream, the point is it doesn't mean "raises the question"or "suggests the question" or "invites the question"or any similar idea. That's not even a natural progression of the phrase into a new territory, it's just a result of people literally guessing at a meaning of a phrase they want to use to sound smarter.

Yeah, but… we already knew that. Now we're talking about how versatile English is as a language that we can abuse wordings like that and do things like portmanteau. Hey, which of either abuck or fubuse sound best?

You're missing my point. My knowledge of English may not be the best as I'm ESL, but from what I can tell "This begs the question; [...]" is semantically and grammatically coherent. It may not be the original meaning of the saying, but said on its own, without any foreknowledge, people commonly, instinctively think it means "Well we should question ourselves about [...] " because that's what the words suggest. That's what the construction of the sentence suggests.

I don't believe anyone who has absolutely no foreknowledge of philosophy will look at those words and immediately think: "Oh, those words mean someone is being a cockbag and claiming shit is true without needing to be proven. Totally obvious and intuitive." It's not what the meaning of the words employ lead to when you look at them from a more neutral point of view.

So to conclude, I would say that it may not be the 'proper' meaning of the saying, but it's the most intuitive and semantically coherent meaning. So in my useless opinion that entitles no one but me, the 'improper' meaning of the saying is more "valid" than the proper meaning, because the link between words and meaning is more straightforward and coherent.

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Do I need to translate this? Because:(Actually this is technically incorrect and if you're getting technical you need to be technically correct.)

And:(This is the semantic equal to what I said, self-demonstrating the correctness of both statements.)

Are both simply reiterating this:(The original, succinct and never disputed.)

You know… I do have the time to filibuster this like I did to CF's shit "men are pigs" thread. That thread is locked now. It's fucking locked. That's not even normal. Arguing about argumentation is like taking a class about taking classes. Beyond tautology this is insipid and neither of you are actually disagreeing. Seriously, try to find where one of your posts countermands the post of the other party.

Stop making out and fight already!

Too lewd for the serious crew.

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How is it not technically correct?

Also, I was responding to a mass of statements at once, not one particular person with my previous post.

In any case, as for the idea that the usage is grammatically and semantically correct, that's actually false, as the semantic correctness is what we are talking about hear (semantics is the study of meaning, which is what we are talking about).
But, if you mean that in isolation the words would otherwise mean what people are using them to mean based purely on the grammar and the isolated words, that is also incorrect. "Begs for the question" might get closer to that, as it would imply something asking (begging) to receive a question. However, "begs the question" implies that the question itself is the object of the action of begging, in a way that would say that one is asking something FROM the question itself (as if the question were a person that you are demanding something of). Of course, there is the other problem given the meanings of Beg (or begge, or beggar) that one might also think of it to mean "avoid the question" which appears to have been a popular misinterpretation for some time before interpreting it as "raises the question" became a thing, due to association with the term beggerd as used by Shakespear in Anthony and Cleopatra.

But, the whole phrase is a possibly bad translation of a Latin phrase that is itself from a Greek phrase that was most influentially described by Aristotle, and holds actually quite some significance today as a result (in fact, it's a problem both in legal situations and in popular politics, as well as general propaganda).

If the phrase really was used in a way that made some kind of logical sense given the isolated words, it might be more forgiven, however, it is not as I mentioned above, as it is not being used to indicate a thing begging (in any of the meanings of beg other than the one that is suited to the proper meaning here) a question (presumably for something). For instance, when someone says, "I beg you, don't do this" they aren't saying "I raise you, don't do this", or when someone says, "he is begging people for money" they don't mean "he is raising people for money" or "he is suggesting people for money".

Seriously, this is like, the opposite of spam.

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Exactly, which is why it's in spam.