30 How to Win Every Argument
All of them contain an assumption that the concealed question
has already been answered affirmatively. It is this unjustified
presumption which constitutes the fallacy. Many questions may
be asked, but if the answer to some is assumed before it is given,
a plurium interrogationum has been committed.
A common version of the fallacy asks questions beginning
'who' or 'why' about facts which have not been established.
Even oldies such as 'Who was the lady I saw you with last night?'
and 'Why did the chicken cross the road?' are, strictly speaking,
examples of this fallacy. They preclude answers such as 'There
was none', or 'It didn't.'
Why did you make your wife alter her will in your favour? And why did
you then go along to the chemist to buy rat poison? Why did you then
put it into her cocoa, and how did you do it without attracting her
attention?
(Attempt not more than three questions.)The inhabitants of the world of the plurium are a puzzled lot.
They can never understand why we tolerate television reporters
who echo anti-patriotic propaganda, how we can curb drug
abuse in our schools, or why it is that so many unemployable
people are produced by our universities and colleges. The
advertisers of that world want to know whether our families are
worth the extra care that their product brings and if we are glad
we chose their brand of shampoo.
In the real world none of these questions would be regarded
as valid until the facts they depend on had been established. The
complex question has to be broken into simpler ones; and often
the denial of the fact presumed invalidates the larger question
altogether.
A variety of complicated genetic or evolutionary explanations
could be advanced to explain why the adult human female has