#Loaded questions game sample questions trial#

This removes the ambiguity of the expected response, therefore nullifying the tactic. 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'. with a simple 'yes' or 'no'), but to challenge the assumption behind the question. Ī common way out of this argument is not to answer the question (e.g. This informal fallacy should be distinguished from that of begging the question, 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.

#Loaded questions game sample questions trial#

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.

Hence, the same question may be loaded in one context, but not in the other.

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. The fallacy relies upon context for its effect: the fact that a question presupposes something does not in itself make the question fallacious. 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 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. 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. Question that contains a controversial or unjustified assumption (e.g., a presumption of guilt)Ī loaded question is a form of complex question that contains a controversial assumption (e.g., a presumption of guilt).