A loaded question is a form of
complex question
A complex question, trick question, multiple question, fallacy of presupposition, or (Latin, 'of many questions') is a question that has a complex presupposition. The presupposition is a proposition that is presumed to be acceptable to the respon ...
that contains a controversial
assumption (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 arise ...
).
Such questions may be used as a
rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or w ...
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?" Without further clarification, an answer of either yes or no suggests the respondent has beaten their wife at some time in the past. Thus, these facts are '' presupposed'' 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. 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
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''. Fallac ...
should be distinguished from that of begging the question
In classical rhetoric and logic, begging the question or assuming the conclusion (Latin: ) is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument's premises assume the truth of the conclusion. Historically, begging the question refers to a fault i ...
,premise
A premise or premiss is a proposition—a true or false declarative statement—used in an argument to prove the truth of another proposition called the conclusion. Arguments consist of a set of premises and a conclusion.
An argument is meaningf ...
whose plausibility depends on the truth of the proposition
A proposition is a statement that can be either true or false. It is a central concept in the philosophy of language, semantics, logic, and related fields. Propositions are the object s denoted by declarative sentences; for example, "The sky ...
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".
Historical examples
Diogenes Laërtius
Diogenes Laërtius ( ; , ; ) was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Little is definitively known about his life, but his surviving book ''Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers'' is a principal source for the history of ancient Greek ph ...
wrote a brief biography of the philosopher Menedemus 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.Russell, Bertrand (1919). "The Philosophy of ...
* Complex question
A complex question, trick question, multiple question, fallacy of presupposition, or (Latin, 'of many questions') is a question that has a complex presupposition. The presupposition is a proposition that is presumed to be acceptable to the respon ...
* 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
A false dilemma, also referred to as false dichotomy or false binary, is an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available. The source of the fallacy lies not in an invalid form of inference but in a false ...
* Gotcha journalism
* 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
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 testimony is restricted in order to reduce the ability of the ex ...
* Mu (negative)
Chinese traditional character for Wu
In the Sinosphere, the word , realized in Japanese and Korean as ' and in Standard Chinese as , meaning 'to lack' or 'without', is a key term in the vocabulary of various East Asian philosophical and religio ...
* Presupposition
In linguistics and philosophy, a presupposition 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:
* ''Jane no longer writes ...
* Suggestive question
* List of fallacies
A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning in the construction of an argument. All forms of human communication can contain fallacies.
Because of their variety, fallacies are challenging to classify. They can be classified by ...
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