Abstract

I advance a pragmatic account of begging the question according to which a use of an argument begs the question just in case it is used as a statement of inference and it fails to state an inference the arguer or an addressee can perform given what they explicitly believe. Accordingly, what begs questions are uses of arguments as statements of inference, and the root cause of begging the question is an argument’s failure to state an inference performable by the reasoners the arguer targets. In these ways, my account is distinguished from other pragmatic accounts. By taking the defect of a question-begging use of an argument to be its failure to state its purported inference, my account highlights in a unique way why question-begging is not an epistemic defect, and why it is not a fallacy, understood as a mistake in reasoning. These points have been made elsewhere, but I believe that their plausibility is enhanced by considering begging the question as nullifying the role of an argument as a statement of inference. Since question-begging uses of arguments fail to state their purported inferences, using an argument in a question-begging-way is not a ratiocinative mistake. This undermines accounts of begging the question that adopt an epistemic approach.