Learn English – “Begs the question” or “Raises the question”

word-choice

From Super User:

I just installed Win7 on my non-PC
(ahem) and was struck by how many
times the Windows installer reboots
during installation. It even tells you
on the screen during installation that
the computer will reboot multiple
times.

I know MS must have a good reason for
this, but I'm completely baffled why
this is necessary? Installation simply
writes to the disk, and because the
system has booted off the DVD, it
already has full write access to the
target hard drive partition. Is
Windows in fact installing a
preliminary disk image and then
booting off of that instead of the DVD
in order to speed up installation?
(Though that then begs the question,
why 2 reboots?)

Edit: Changed "3+ reboots" to "2
reboots". It probably seemed like more
than that because I had to do an extra
reboot initially (back to my host OS)
to fix the format of my partition, and
then there were the subsequent reboots
for windows updates.

(Emphasis added by me)

It seems to me like "raises the question" would fit better than "begs the question" in this case. What is correct?

Best Answer

"To beg the question" means "to raise the question," or "to invite an obvious question."
From the context of that sentence, I would think that "beg the question" is used with the second meaning I reported.

The NOAD reports the following notes about the meaning of "beg the question":

The original meaning of the phrase beg the question belongs to the field of logic and is a translation of the Latin term petitio principii, literally meaning "laying claim to a principle" (that is, assuming something that ought to be proved first), as in the following sentence: "by devoting such a large part of the anti-drug budget to education, we are begging the question of its significance in the battle against drugs." To some traditionalists, this is still the only correct meaning. However, over the last 100 years or so, another, more general use has arisen: "invite an obvious question," as in "some definitions of mental illness beg the question of what constitutes normal behavior." This is by far the more common use today in modern standard English.

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