Critical faults and fallacies of questioning

Abstract

This study of fallacies, errors, faults, illicit attacks and blunders of questioning and replying to questions is illustrated with several challenging examples of tricky, argumentative questions drawn from parliamentary debates and other everyday cases of argumentation. Among the types of problematic questions analyzed are: the traditional so-called fallacy of many questions, illustrated by the famous ‘Have you stopped beating your spouse?’; black and white questions; terminologically loaded questions; and questions containing personal attacks. These and other types of problematic questions, as well as evasive replies, and replying to a question with a question, are studied. Critical errors of reasoning are identified and analyzed by developing context-based, normative models of reasonable dialogue in which a questioner must have freedom to ask informative and probing questions, and the respondent must be constrained to give reasonably direct, not overly evasive answers. An underlying philosophy behind a new conception of fallacy is presented. A fallacy is characterized as a calculated tactic of deceptive argumentation used by one participant in a dialogue to ‘trip up’ another participant. According to this conception, a fallacy is an argumentative technique, one which could be used rightly in other instances, but is misused in the given case as a tactic to subvert and hinder the rules of a reasonable dialogue.