petitio principii
The following experience is a perfect example of when someone falls into the petitio principii fallacy, more commonly known as begging the question.
To maintain the anonymity of the participants, I have changed all the names in the story. The story is also condensed and summarized. This is not an actual word for word account.
Who is who:
Kate = my colleague with whom I am conversing
Susan = a colleague with whom we are annoyed with often
Marie = a colleague that is always extremely annoyed with Susan
Kate and I were recently discussing some of the people within our professional circle and Kate said, “you know Marie came up to me and told me that she just celebrated her tenth anniversary of meditating twice daily.”
“Wow, that is impressive dedication”, I replied with sincerity.
“You know, I would think that someone who practiced meditation for ten years would be much more tolerant about other people. Marie is always extremely irritated with Susan, and I would think that a serious meditator would be much more relaxed about it.”
“Why? Are you into meditation, Kate?”
“Yes. In fact, I am trying to meditate every morning, and I look forward to the day when I will be able to sit in a 2 hour trance. It will be awesome.”
After pondering Kate’s response, I replied “well maybe you should be less critical about the practitioner and more critical about the practice itself.”
“You are right, maybe Marie is just not meditating correctly and that is why she is easily irritated with Susan.”
“No. I mean maybe meditation is not all that it is cracked up to be. Maybe meditation does not work.”
Kate replied briskly. “No, meditation definitely works.”
“Kate, I really think that maybe this is cause to question the validity of the claims made by practitioners of meditation. Maybe, meditation just doesn’t work as well as some say. Why do you think it works so well? Shouldn’t you be skeptical of its value?”
“It will work. I am sure of it. People say it works and I am going to have success.”
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Begging the question is stating a “truth” and assuming the truth of that “truth” without using any other evidence to support it. The above dialogue is a classic example and it irritated me. Why not engage in skeptical dialogue about the claims of a methodology that often purports transcendence and spiritual enlightenment?
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and begging the question is not providing any evidence.