“The putative champions of liberty took up the cry of dissent only after it had become profitable and safe’’ … —Lewis

"Actions are according to intentions, and everyone will get what was intended. Whoever migrates with an intention for Allah and His messenger, the migration will be for the sake of Allah and his Messenger. And whoever migrates for worldly gain or to marry a woman, then his migration will be for the sake of whatever he migrated for’’

Related by Bukhari & Muslim

Divining intention is not beyond the realms of possibility

· We can develop the meaning of the thoughts of others by observing their habits of actions.

Loaded question

"How am I to get in?" asked Alice again, in a louder tone.

"Are you to get in at all?" said the Footman, "That's the first question, you know."

…Unquote

Source: Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Ch. 6.

Exposition:

A "loaded question", like a loaded gun, is a dangerous thing. A loaded question is a question with a false or questionable presupposition, and it is "loaded" with that presumption. The question "Have you stopped beating your wife?" presupposes that you have beaten your wife prior to its asking, as well as that you have a wife. If you are unmarried, or have never beaten your wife, then the question is loaded.

Since this example is a yes/no question, there are only the following two direct answers:

1. "Yes, I have stopped beating my wife", which entails "I was beating my wife."

2. "No, I haven't stopped beating my wife", which entails "I am still beating my wife."

Thus, either direct answer entails that you have beaten your wife, which is, therefore, a presupposition of the question. So, a loaded question is one which you cannot answer directly without implying a falsehood or a statement that you deny. For this reason, the proper response to such a question is not to answer it directly, but to either refuse to answer or to reject the question.

Some systems of parliamentary debate provide for "dividing the question", that is, splitting a complex question up into two or more simple questions. Such a move can be used to split the example as follows:

1. "Have you ever beaten your wife?"

2. "If so, are you still doing so?"

In this way, 1 can be answered directly by "no", and then the conditional question 2 does not arise.

Exposure:

Since a question is not an argument, simply asking a loaded question is not a fallacious argument. Rather, loaded questions are typically used to trick someone into implying something they did not intend. For instance, salespeople learn to ask such loaded questions as: "Will that be cash or charge?" This question gives only two alternatives, thus presuming that the potential buyer has already decided to make a purchase, which is similar to the Black-or-White Fallacy. If the potential buyer answers the question directly, he may suddenly find himself an actual buyer.

Form:

A question with a false, disputed, or question-begging presupposition.

Example:

Why should merely cracking down on terrorism help to stop it, when that method hasn't worked in any other country? Why are we so hated in the Muslim world? What did our government do there to bring this horror home to all those innocent Americans? And why don't we learn anything, from our free press, about the gross ineptitude of our state agencies? about what's really happening in Afghanistan? about the pertinence of Central Asia's huge reserves of oil and natural gas? about the links between the Bush and the bin Laden families?

Source: Mark Crispin Miller, "Brain Drain", Context, No. 9

Analysis

Analysis of the Example:

This is a series of loaded questions and it illustrates one of the common uses of the loaded question as a rhetorical device, namely, innuendo. The questions come at the end of the article, and presuppose the following controversial claims:

· The American government did something to bring about the terrorist attacks.

· The public doesn't learn anything from the press about that government's mistakes.

· The public is not learning about what's happening in Afghanistan.

· Central Asia's oil reserves are somehow pertinent.

· There are some unspecified links between the Bush and bin Laden families.

No evidence is given in the article for any of these claims. Loaded questions are used in this way to slip claims into rhetoric without the burden of proving them, or the necessity of taking responsibility for unproven assertions.

Resources:

· Julian Baggini, "The Fallacy of the Complex Question", Bad Moves

· David Hackett Fischer, Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (Harper & Row, 1970), pp. 8-9.

· Douglas Walton, "The Fallacy of Many Questions: On the Notions of Complexity, Loadedness and Unfair Entrapment in Interrogative Theory" (PDF). This paper is not as weighty as its title, and it contains some nice examples and interesting history of the fallacy.

Historical examples[edit]

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 died. I mean, that is more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Madeleine Albright: "I think that is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it."^[6] 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.^[7]

For another example, the New Zealand corporal punishment referendum, 2009 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"

Complex Question Fallacy

Get It!

plurium interrogationum

(also known as: many questions fallacy, fallacy of presupposition, loaded question, trick question, false question)

Description: A question that has a presupposition built in, which implies something but protects the one asking the question from accusations of false claims. It is a form of misleading discourse, and it is a fallacy when the audience does not detect the assumed information implicit in the question, and accepts it as a fact.

Example #1:

How many times per day do you beat your wife?

Explanation: Even if the response is an emphatic, “none!”, the damage has been done. If you are hearing this question, you are more likely to accept the possibility that the person who was asked this question is a wife-beater, which is fallacious reasoning on your part.

Example #2:

How many school shootings should we tolerate before we change the gun laws?

Explanation: The presupposition is that changing the gun laws will decrease the number of school shootings. This may be the case, but it is a claim that is implied in the statement and hidden by a more complex question. Reactively, when one hears a question such as this, one's mind will attempt to search for an answer to the question—which is actually a distraction from rejecting the implicit claim being made. It is quite brilliant, but still fallacious.

Exception: It is not a fallacy if the implied information in the question is known to be an accepted fact.

How long can one survive without water?

Here, it is presumed that we need water to survive, which very few would deny that fact.

Double-barreled question

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A double-barreled question (sometimes, double-direct question^[1]) is an informal fallacy. It is committed when someone asks a question that touches upon more than one issue, yet allows only for one answer.^[2]^[3]^[4] This may result in inaccuracies in the attitudes being measured for the question, as the respondent can answer only one of the two questions, and cannot indicate which one is being answered.^[5]

Many double-barreled questions can be detected by the existence of the grammatical conjunction "and" in them.^[2]^[3] This is not a foolproof test, as the word "and" can exist in properly constructed questions.

A question asking about three items is known as "trible (triple, treble)-barreled".^[4] In legal proceedings, a double-barreled question is called a compound question.^[6]

Examples[edit]

An example of a double-barreled question would be the following: "do you think that students should have more classes about history and culture?" This question asks about two different issues: "do you think that students should have more classes about history" and "do you think that students should have more classes about culture?" Combining both questions into one makes it unclear what exactly is being measured, and as each question may elicit a different response if asked separately there is an increased likelihood of confusing the respondents.^[2] In other words, while some respondents would answer "yes" to both and some "no" to both, some would like to answer both "yes and no".^[4]

Other examples of double-barreled questions:

· "Please agree or disagree with the following statement: Cars should be faster and safer."^[3]

· "How satisfied are you with your pay and job conditions?"^[4]

· "How often and how much time do you spend on each visit to a hospital?"^[5]

· "Does your department have a special recruitment policy for men and women?"^[5]

· "Do you think that there is a good market for the product and that it will sell well?"

· "Should the government spend less money on the military and more on education?"

· "Is this tool interesting and useful?"

The same considerations apply to questions with fixed choice answers, as an answer can also be double-barreled. For example, if a question asks, "What motivates you to work?" an answer "Pleasant work and nice co-workers" is double-barreled.^[4]

Buttering-up is a type of a double-barreled question. It happens when one of the questions is a question that the questioned person will want to answer "yes" to, and another that the questioner hopes will be answered with the same "yes". For example, "Would you be a nice guy and lend me five bucks?"

Some questions may not be double-barreled but confusingly similar enough to a double-barreled question to result in similar issues. For example, the question "Should the organization reduce paperwork required of employees by hiring more administrators?" can be interpreted as composed of two questions: "Should the organization reduce paperwork required of employees?" and "Should the organization hire more administrators?"

Double-barreled questions have been asked by professionals, resulting in notable skewed media reports and research pieces. For example, Harris Poll used double-barreled questions in the 1980s, investigating the US public opinion on Libya–United States relations, and American attitudes toward Mikhail Gorbachev.^[7]

U.S. trial usage[edit]

In a legal trial, a compound question may raise an objection,^[8] as the witness may be unable to provide a clear answer to the inquiry.

One guide to trial practice offers the following example of a compound question:^[9]

Cross-examiner: As you approached the intersection, did you look down, change the radio station, and then look up and for the first time notice the oncoming car?
Opponent: Objection, compound question.

An example in practice has been cited in the case of Weise v. Rainville (1959) 173 CA2d 496, 506, where the objection to such a question was sustained because such a question "raises the danger that the witness does not intend to reply to both questions" when answering "yes" to the compound question.^[10] It may also be unclear to the court, jurors, or appellate bodies, what the witness intended in answering the question; and such a question may combine a request for relevant information with a request for information that is irrelevant or inadmissable.^[10] If the question is one for which the answer will not be harmful to the opposing attorney's case, then the attorney need not object at all; alternately, the opposing attorney may object, and specify when objecting that he would not object to a rephrasing of the question into separate, non-compound parts.^[10]

Compound questions are most frequently asked during cross-examination.^[11]

In popular culture[edit]

On his album Mitch All Together, Mitch Hedberg jokes about a supposed double-barreled question on his health insurance form: "Have you ever used sugar or PCP?"

Example 1: Double-Barreled Question

Questions that group different topics may weaken the results. Take this question:

Please tell me whether you would vote for or against a candidate who supports reducing federal spending on education and welfare?

The question assumes that respondents logically group ‘education’ and ‘welfare’ together, but how would someone respond who was against cutting welfare, but favored spending cuts in education? This example is double-barreled, ambiguous, and confusing!

Example 2: Confusing Question

Any question that causes an analyst or reader to say, “huh?” probably had the same impact on the respondent. Like this one:

Does it seem possible or does it seem impossible to you that the Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened?

What is the question? Even if the respondent understood the question, would they understand how to answer? What does a reply of ‘yes’ mean? Needless to say, this question did not yield reliable data. The survey firm recognized this and went back into the field with a less confusing question, which yielded different results.

Complex question

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A complex question, trick question, multiple question or plurium interrogationum (Latin, "of many questions") is a question that has a presupposition that is complex. The presupposition is a proposition that is presumed to be acceptable to the respondent when the question is asked. The respondent becomes committed to this proposition when he gives any direct answer. The presupposition is called "complex" because it is a conjunctive proposition, a disjunctive proposition, or a conditional proposition. It could also be another type of proposition that contains some logical connective in a way that makes it have several parts that are component propositions.^[1]

Complex questions can but do not have to be fallacious, as in being an informal fallacy.^[1]

Implication by question[edit]

One form of misleading discourse involves presupposing and implying something without stating it explicitly, by phrasing it as a question. For example, the question "Does Mr. Jones have a brother in the army?" does not claim that he does, but implies that there must be at least some indication that he does, or the question would not need to be asked.^[2] The person asking the question is thus protected from accusations of making false claims, but still manages to make the implication in the form of a hidden compound question. The fallacy isn't in the question itself, but rather in the listener's assumption that the question would not have been asked without some evidence to support the supposition. This example seems harmless, but consider this one: "Does Mr. Jones have a brother in jail?"

In order to have the desired effect, the question must imply something uncommon enough not to be asked without some evidence to the fact. For example, the question "Does Mr. Jones have a brother?" would not cause the listener to think there must be some evidence that he does, since this form of general question is frequently asked with no foreknowledge of the answer.

Complex question fallacy[edit]

For more details on this topic, see Loaded question.

The complex question fallacy, or many questions fallacy, is context dependent; a presupposition by itself doesn't have to be a fallacy. It is committed when someone asks a question that presupposes something that has not been proven or accepted by all the people involved.^[1]^[3]^[4]^[5]^[6] For example, "Is Mary wearing a blue or a red dress?" is fallacious because it artificially restricts the possible responses to a blue or red dress. If the person being questioned wouldn't necessarily consent to those constraints, the question is fallacious.^[1]^[4]^[5]^[6]

Hence we can distinguish between:

· legitimately complex questions (not a fallacy): A question that assumes something that the hearer would readily agree to. For example, "Who is the monarch of the United Kingdom?" assumes that there is a place called the United Kingdom and that it has a monarch, both true.

· illegitimately complex question: On the other hand, "Who is the King of France?" would commit the complex question fallacy because while it assumes there is a place called France (true), it also assumes France currently has a king (false). But since answering this question does not seem to incriminate or otherwise embarrass the speaker, it is complex but not really a loaded question.^[7]

When a complex question contains controversial presuppositions (often with loaded language – having an unspoken and often emotive implication), it is known as a loaded question.^[3]^[4]^[6] For example, a classic loaded question, containing incriminating assumptions that the questioned persons seem to admit to if they answer the questions instead of challenging them, is "Have you stopped beating your wife?" If the person questioned answers, "Yes", then that implies that he has previously beaten his wife. A loaded question may be asked to trick the respondent into admitting something that the questioner believes to be true, and which may in fact be true. So the previous question is "loaded," whether or not the respondent has actually beaten his wife — and if the respondent answers anything other than "yes" or "no" in an attempt to deny having beaten his wife, the questioner can accuse him of "trying to dodge the question". The very same question may be loaded in one context, but not in the other. For example, the previous question would not be loaded were it asked during a trial in which the defendant has already admitted having beaten his wife.^[4]

Techniques[edit]

"Gotcha" journalism can be used to get a subject with something genuinely discreditable to hide to reveal wrongdoing;^{[clarification
needed]} there can be a fine line between robust and gotcha journalism. Some methods claimed to be gotcha journalism by those involved include moving away from the agreed upon topic of the interview and switching to an embarrassing subject that was agreed to be out-of-bounds and leading the interviewee to discuss it and commit to a certain answer, then, confronting them with prepared material designed to contradict or discredit that position.

Gotcha journalism is often designed to keep the interviewee on the defensive by, for example, being required to explain some of their own statements taken out of context thus effectively preventing the interviewee from clearly presenting their position.^[2] The intent of gotcha journalism is always premeditated and used to defame or discredit the interviewees by portraying them as self-contradictory, malevolent, unqualified or immoral.^[3]

It has also been used as an excuse to evade a question to which the interviewee does not know the answer, and where their lack of knowledge would make them appear foolish or uninformed.

IT Job Seekers: Can You Answer an Interviewer's 12 Gotcha Questions?

Gotcha No.1: Why have you been out of work for an extended period of time?

If you've been out of a job for a while, you better be able to explain it. Brian Nettles, director of enterprise systems at real estate company CB Richard Ellis, says candidates for the three open positions in the IT department sometimes stumble on this question. And he's asking it more frequently as the recession deepens.

Gotcha No. 2: How many people were on your team, and how many were laid off?

The typical answer to the first question is that you were laid off—but this could trap you. Nettles seeks to find out whether the candidate was the only person laid off. If she was the only one to have lost her job, that fact could indicate the IT manager used the recession and budget cuts to get rid of a weak link on the team. (Ouch!) But Nettles doesn't jump to any hasty conclusions. Instead, he moves on to question number three.

[ For more job interview questions, and to share the questions you like to ask (if you're a hiring manager) or that you've been asked (if you're a job seeker), see Meridith Levinson's Career Connection blog. ]

Gotcha No. 3: Why do you think you were selected for the reduction in force?

Nettles says a job seeker's anger toward his former employer sometimes surfaces when answering this question. Yet a candidate who speaks negatively about a former employer "shows a lack of self-control or discipline," he says.

Other candidates say they don't know why they got laid off, which Nettles sees as an acceptable response. That is, provided the candidate has answered other questions well and can confidently explain why he would be right for the position.

Another get-out-of-jail answer: "Sometimes, they say they want to mull over the question and come back to it, which is a good response if they're caught off guard," adds Nettles.

Gotcha No. 4: Have you ever fired anyone?

George Tomko, a CIO-turned-independent consultant, says he was surprised when a CEO asked him if he had fired people. "Well yeah," he says he answered. "I don't consider it notches on the gun belt, but I've had to do that."

The CEO indicated that he had interviewed a number of people who hadn't fired anyone and that he wanted someone with that kind of experience.

Arun Manasingh, a former senior vice president and department head at SMBC Leasing and Finance, says he would be shocked if the firing question didn't come up during CIO job interviews. If you're on the receiving end of this question, he says, it's a good bet you're needed to fix some serious problems.

[ Want to read about more interview questions, see Unconventional IT Job Interview Questions and 6 Job Interview Question to Identify Change Agents and Innovators. ]

Gotcha No. 5: If the CEO or someone very senior in the organization comes to you with an urgent problem, how would you handle it?

IT professionals at all levels seem to get asked this question. Manasingh says he's fielded it, and he and his staff would pose it to prospective junior-level employees "to see how they think on their feet" at SMBC Leading and Finance. Manasingh says the answer to this question helps him identify candidates who will take the initiative. He doesn't want candidates who would immediately call him and ask for direction.

Simon Stapleton, chief innovation officer with an insurance company in the U.K., also asks this question, but adds a twist: As soon as he asks it, he begins rapping his knuckles on his desk to create a sense of urgency and make people feel they're under pressure.

"The candidates who perform best don't show signs of outward pressure," he says. "I find it's a really strong way of distinguishing the level-headed people who can work under pressure from those who get flustered."

Gotcha No. 6: What books have you read lately?

This rather innocuous question is loaded with booby traps. Some of the senior-level positions inside CB Richard Ellis's IT department require research and self-study to stay current, says Nettles. So he asks about books to get a sense of whether a candidate is self-motivated—"definitely a positive" when IT department training budgets are slashed.

If a candidate says he hasn't read any books lately, that's not necessarily bad, says Nettles. "I dig into that more," he says. "I'll ask them if they're reading any technical manuals, or if they visit any technical websites to stay current. I'll lead them a little if they give me no for an answer."

Gotcha No. 7: Have you published any technical documents or white papers?

Some IT architecture and senior-level software engineer positions at CB Richard Ellis require heavy documentation, says Nettles. He wants to know what candidates have written about. If they haven't published anything, Nettles wants to hear what they plan to write about (and not the next great American novel).

Gotcha No. 8: A year from now, what is going to keep you at this company?

While working as an independent IT consultant, Tomko interviewed for a CIO job in 2006 with The Solae Company. The CEO asked if he would grow bored with a corporate CIO job. Tomko felt the CEO was sizing him up: Was he the kind of guy that liked to parachute in and shape up IT before running off to the next fire, or was he going to stick around for the long haul?

Tomko's response? "I don't know," he told the CEO. "All I can tell you is that I wouldn't be sitting here if I didn't think this was something I wanted to do. I can't tell you if I'll still want to be here a year and a half from now. That's a chance we're all going to have to take." (Tomko was offered the CIO job, and he accepted it. He stayed a year and five months.)

Gotcha No. 9: How long will it take before you make a positive impact?

Every IT manager wants to hire someone who can get up to speed in a new environment without a lot of training or hand-holding.

Nettles tries to determine how confident the job seeker is in her abilities and how well she grasped the job description and key responsibilities, in hopes of gauging her ability to quickly make a positive impact. If the job seeker understands the job for which she's interviewing and the challenges associated with it, she ought to be able to explain how long it will take before she has an impact.

Nettles says that senior-level IT professionals say it will take them 30 days to learn their new environment and 60 to 90 days before they make a strong impact. Ultimately, he wants to hear a candidate say that they're the guy for the position and that they'll be an A-player as fast as possible.

Gotcha No. 10: What makes you think you had anything to do with that achievement?

As a CIO, Tomko encountered job seekers who were intent on discussing all of the accomplishments on their résumés. So he would press them by asking how much they really contributed to the accomplishment.

"It forces the candidate to clearly articulate what their role was in that achievement," he says, adding that he was sometimes asked this question when he interviewed for CIO jobs, too.

Gotcha No. 11: If you were able to get 20 percent cost savings, could you have gotten thirty or forty percent?

When candidates would "wear the accomplishments listed on their résumé as a badge," Tomko says, he'd bring in a dose of reality with this question. Not taking their statements at face value, Tomko wanted to determine whether the amount of cost-savings was high- medium- or low performance.

Gotcha No. 12: What are your weaknesses and some of your failures?

Despite the fact that questions about strengths, weaknesses and failures come up in every job interview, job seekers continue to stumble on them, says Nettles.

"There's no walking away from the failure question," adds Tomko, so job seekers should rehearse a confident response.

But don't say that your biggest weakness is working too hard, which makes hiring managers roll their eyes. Come up with something genuine and explain how you've worked around it.

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Dr Sohail Ansari

Putative impossibility of knowing intention By Prof Dr Sohail Ansari