AmbergrisCaye.com Home Forums Talk Belize Chat Area Looking for a word

ambiguous?

Lots of good words close to the right one, but NOT the right one. This isn't a trick question - there is a word out there that serves this purpose exactly and I have known it, but now it completely escapes me.

That usually infallible source, Wikipedia, says of loaded questions:

Loaded question, also known as complex question, presupposition, "trick question", or plurium interrogationum (Latin, "of many questions"), is an informal fallacy or logical fallacy. It is committed when someone asks a question that presupposes something that has not been proven or accepted by all the people involved. This fallacy is often used rhetorically, so that the question limits direct replies to those that serve the questioner's agenda. An example of this is the question "Are you still beating your wife?" Whether the respondent answers yes or no, he 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.

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.

This fallacy is often confused with begging the question, which offers a premise no more plausible than, and often just a restatement of, the conclusion.

--Lan Sluder

P.S. I still call it, simply, a loaded question.

Loaded question:

Logical fallacy

demagoguery?

Lan, that's the best yet, and I'm wondering if there's any point in looking further. "Loaded" does the job pretty well, and there's no point in using a word if people don't understand what you mean by it. But I'm sure there is another one, somewhere just out of reach.....

plurium?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

Loaded question, also known as complex question, presupposition, "trick question", or plurium interrogationum (Latin, "of many questions"), is an informal fallacy or logical fallacy.[1] It is committed when someone asks a question that presupposes something that has not been proven or accepted by all the people involved. This fallacy is often used rhetorically, so that the question limits direct replies to those that serve the questioner's agenda.[1] An example of this is the question "Are you still beating your wife?" Whether the respondent answers yes or no, he 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.[1]

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.[1]

This fallacy is often confused with begging the question,[2] which offers a premise no more plausible than, and often just a restatement of, the conclusion.[3]

Loaded questions
Suggestive question
Buttering-up
Legitimately complex question
Illegitimately complex question
Implied Dilemma

An American judge did that to me once. The attorney said i was a 'hostel witness' so the judge directed me to answer either 'Yes' or 'No', i posed to the judge that it might be misleading and mentioned the 'Do you still beat your wife' example. The judge wasn't amused and i think he had even heard that before :-).
I lost a large sum of money and learned a good lesson in court precedings.

Is there an echo in here?

--Lan Sluder