Loaded question

A loaded question or complex question is a question that contains a controversial assumption (e.g., a presumption of guilt).[1]

Such questions may be used as a rhetorical tool: the question attempts to limit direct replies to be those that serve the questioner's agenda.[2] 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 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.[2] 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.[2] 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.[2]

This informal fallacy should be distinguished from that of begging the question,[3] which offers a premise whose plausibility depends on the truth of the proposition asked about, and which is often an implicit restatement of the proposition.[4]

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".[5] 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 in which he relates that:[6]

[O]nce when Alexinus asked him whether he had left off beating his father, he said, "I have not beaten him, and I have not left off;" and when he said further that he ought to put an end to the doubt by answering explicitly yes or no, "It would be absurd," he rejoined, "to comply with your conditions, when I can stop you at the entrance."[7]

Madeleine Albright (U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.) fell into a trap of answering a loaded question (and later regretted not challenging it instead) on 60 Minutes on 12 May 1996. Lesley Stahl asked, regarding the effects of UN sanctions against Iraq, "We have heard that a half million children have (sic) died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Instead of questioning this unattributed death toll or how much of it could have been due to sanctions, Madeleine Albright said "I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it."[8] She later wrote of this response:

I must have been crazy; I should have answered the question by reframing it and pointing out the inherent flaws in the premise behind it.... As soon as I had spoken, I wished for the power to freeze time and take back those words. My reply had been a terrible mistake, hasty, clumsy, and wrong.... I had fallen into a trap and said something that I simply did not mean. That is no one's fault but my own.[9]

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".[10]

In a July, 2019, Democratic Party presidential primary debate, CNN's Jake Tapper asked Senator Elizabeth Warren, "Senator Sanders has said that people in the middle class will pay more in taxes to help pay for Medicare for All, though that will be offset by the elimination of insurance premiums and other costs. Are you also, quote, 'with Bernie' on Medicare for All when it comes to raising taxes on middle-class Americans to pay for it?"[11]

See also

References
  1. Bassham, Gregory (2004). Critical Thinking. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 9780072879599.
  2. Douglas N. Walton, Informal logic: a handbook for critical argumentation, Cambridge University Press, 1989, ISBN 0-521-37925-3, pp. 36–37
  3. "Fallacy: Begging the Question". The Nizkor Project. Archived from the original on March 10, 2019. Retrieved January 22, 2008.
  4. Carroll, Robert Todd. The Skeptic's Dictionary. John Wiley & Sons. p. 51. ISBN 0-471-27242-6.
  5. Layman, C. Stephen (2003). The Power of Logic. p. 158.
  6. Walton, Douglas N. (November 1999). "The fallacy of many questions: on the notions of complexity, loadedness and unfair entrapment in interrogative theory" (PDF). Argumentation. 13 (4): 379–383. doi:10.1023/A:1007727929716. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2018-12-21. Retrieved 2020-04-25.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  7. Laertius, Diogenes (1853). The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers. Translated by Yonge, Charles Duke. London: H.G. Bohn. p. 109. OCLC 3123020.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  8. Douglas E. Hill (2002). "Albright's Blunder". Irvine Review. Archived from the original on 2003-06-03. Retrieved 2008-01-04.
  9. Albright, Madeleine (2003). Madam Secretary: A Memoir. p. 275. ISBN 0-7868-6843-0.
  10. "Anti-smacking debate goes to referendum". 3 News. June 15, 2009. Retrieved 2010-02-03.
  11. Julie Hollar (February 29, 2020). "Debate Moderators Frame Questions to Define Acceptable Politics". Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting.
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