Arguments are sometimes criticized as begging the question. An argument is said to beg the question if the conclusion is taken for granted in the premises. The conclusion, however, is implicit – and hence, in a sense, “taken for granted” – in the premises of every deductively valid argument. That has led some philosophers to conclude that begging the question is not a formal fallacy, as otherwise every valid argument would be fallacious. In my latest article, which was just published in Philosophy and Progress, I argue that this conclusion has been drawn too quickly and propose an epistemic criterion that distinguishes between good and bad valid arguments.
Rainer Ebert 