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A loaded question is a form of complex question that contains a controversial
assumption Assumption, in Christianity, refers to the Assumption of Mary, a belief in the taking up of the Virgin Mary into heaven. Assumption may also refer to: Places * Assumption, Alberta, Canada * Assumption, Illinois, United States ** Assumption Tow ...
(e.g., a
presumption of guilt A presumption of guilt is any presumption within the criminal justice system that a person is guilty of a crime, for example a presumption that a suspect is guilty unless or until proven to be innocent. Such a presumption may legitimately aris ...
). Such questions may be used as a
rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...
al tool: the question attempts to limit direct replies to be those that serve the questioner's agenda. The traditional example is the question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" Whether the respondent answers yes or no, they will admit to having a wife and having beaten her at some time in the past. Thus, these facts are ''
presupposed In the branch of linguistics known as pragmatics, a presupposition (or PSP) is an implicit assumption about the world or background belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse. Examples of presuppositions include ...
'' by the question, and in this case an entrapment, because it narrows the respondent to a single answer, and the fallacy of many questions has been committed. The fallacy relies upon context for its effect: the fact that a question presupposes something does not in itself make the question
fallacious A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning, or "wrong moves," in the construction of an argument which may appear stronger than it really is if the fallacy is not spotted. The term in the Western intellectual tradition was intr ...
. Only when some of these presuppositions are not necessarily agreed to by the person who is asked the question does the argument containing them become fallacious. Hence, the same question may be loaded in one context, but not in the other. For example, the previous question would not be loaded if it were asked during a trial in which the defendant had already admitted to beating his wife.Douglas N. Walton, ''Informal logic: a handbook for critical argumentation'', Cambridge University Press, 1989,
pp. 36–37
/ref> This
informal fallacy Informal fallacies are a type of incorrect argument in natural language. The source of the error is not just due to the ''form'' of the argument, as is the case for formal fallacies, but can also be due to their ''content'' and ''context''. Fall ...
should be distinguished from that of begging the question, which offers a
premise A premise or premiss is a true or false statement that helps form the body of an argument, which logically leads to a true or false conclusion. A premise makes a declarative statement about its subject matter which enables a reader to either agre ...
whose plausibility depends on the truth of the
proposition In logic and linguistics, a proposition is the meaning of a declarative sentence. In philosophy, " meaning" is understood to be a non-linguistic entity which is shared by all sentences with the same meaning. Equivalently, a proposition is the no ...
asked about, and which is often an implicit restatement of the proposition.


Defense

A common way out of this argument is not to answer the question (e.g. with a simple 'yes' or 'no'), but to challenge the assumption behind the question. To use an earlier example, a good response to the question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" would be "I have ''never'' beaten my wife". This removes the ambiguity of the expected response, therefore nullifying the tactic. However, the asker is likely to respond by accusing the one who answers of dodging the question.


Historical examples

Diogenes Laërtius wrote a brief biography of the philosopher
Menedemus Menedemus of Eretria ( grc-gre, Μενέδημος ὁ Ἐρετριεύς; 345/44 – 261/60 BC) was a Greek philosopher and founder of the Eretrian school. He learned philosophy first in Athens, and then, with his friend Asclepiades, he subseq ...
in which he relates that: For another example, the 2009 referendum on corporal punishment in New Zealand asked: "Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?" Murray Edridge, of Barnardos New Zealand, criticized the question as "loaded and ambiguous" and claimed "the question presupposes that smacking is a part of good parental correction".


See also

*
Barber paradox The barber paradox is a puzzle derived from Russell's paradox. It was used by Bertrand Russell as an illustration of the paradox, though he attributes it to an unnamed person who suggested it to him.''The Philosophy of Logical Atomism'', repri ...
* Complex question *
Entailment (pragmatics) Linguistic entailments are entailments which arise in natural language. If a sentence ''A'' entails a sentence ''B'', sentence ''A'' cannot be true without ''B'' being true as well. For instance, the English sentence "Pat is a fluffy cat" entails ...
* False dilemma *
Gotcha journalism "Gotcha journalism" is a pejorative term used by media critics to describe interviewing methods that appear designed to entrap interviewees into making statements that are damaging or discreditable to their cause, character, integrity, or reputati ...
*
Implicature In pragmatics, a subdiscipline of linguistics, an implicature is something the speaker suggests or implies with an utterance, even though it is not literally expressed. Implicatures can aid in communicating more efficiently than by explicitly sayi ...
*
Leading question In common law systems that rely on testimony by witnesses, a leading question is a question that suggests a particular answer and contains information the examiner is looking to have confirmed. The use of leading questions in court to elicit tes ...
*
Mu (negative) The Japanese and Korean term ' () or Chinese (), meaning "not have; without", is a key word in Buddhism, especially Zen traditions. Etymology The Old Chinese * () is cognate with the Proto-Tibeto-Burman *''ma'', meaning "not". This reconstru ...
* Presupposition * Suggestive question *
List of fallacies A fallacy is reasoning that is logically invalid, or that undermines the logical validity of an argument. All forms of human communication can contain fallacies. Because of their variety, fallacies are challenging to classify. They can be classif ...


References


External links


Fallacy: Loaded Questions and Complex Claims
Critical Thinking exercises. San Jose State University.

The Fallacy Files
What Is The Loaded Question Fallacy? Definition and Examples
Fallacy in Logic {{DEFAULTSORT:Loaded Question Informal fallacies