I beg your question? Stop making me dizzy with your circular reasoning!

Source: Wikimedia Commons public domain photo
(with text added by the author).

Logical fallacies are errors in reasoning that sometimes infect our writing. In student-written essays, they are usually unintentional, but in other genres (political speech, corporate press releases and advertising come to mind), logical fallacies are frequently employed intentionally to manipulate or deceive. We need to learn about them so we can both avoid them in our own writing and also recognize them when used by others. One common logical fallacy is called circular reasoning, also known colloquially as "begging the question."

Exhausted parents are intimately familiar with this logical fallacy. They use it when their young children incessantly ask "why?" and in frustration they finally answer "because I said so!" Here's another example. Do you ever get those annoying political phone calls at home? I usually hang up on them, but let's imagine taking one and engaging in conversation. Senator X is a friend of the working man, the earnest young campaign worker asserts. How do I know that? you reply. Because he supports worker safety, comes the response. How can I tell he supports worker safety? you ask. Why, because he's a friend of the working man, of course! This fuzzy, merry-go-round "logic" will make anyone dizzy! And, of course, there's another problem. The term "working man" implies that everyone who works is a man, but correcting that fallacy will just have to wait for a future post...

© 2014 Bob Dial.  All rights reserved.