Begging the Question

When Epstein was discussing the idea of violating the principle of rational discussion he explains how people sometimes try to argue irrationally by trying to mislead the listener which in turn actually can make their argument worse and can even mess it up enough to where there is no argument anymore.

The idea I am going to explain that Epstein mentioned is “begging the question”. Epstein stated that “The point of an argument is to convince that a claim is true.  So the premises of an argument need to be more plausible than the conclusion“.  What he is trying to say is that if all your premises are just statements that are just pretty much repeating themselves and they all have the same idea that contributes to the conclusion then it can make your argument sound wordy and repetitive which usually leads to the listener to seeing that there is not much of an argument.

An example argument is:

-The teacher is always right.

-How do you know?

-Because she know everything.

-But why do you think that is true?

-Because she is the teacher.

As you can see in the example, the argument is begging the question because it just stated very dubious and vague premises.  Also they set themselves up with a hard argument because they used the word always in their conclusion.  If they wanted to prove how teachers are always right then they are going to need better premises than the “because I said so” premises the arguer gave.  Another reason this argument is begging the question is that the premises are not stronger than the conclusion and all of the argument points they gave we very weak and vague.