Simple yes-or-no question? No.

In the Senate testimony the other day, Inhofe asked Gore:

Are you ready to change the way you live?

And he added this:

Now, the one thing I'd like to have you not use in response to this question, which is a yes or no question, is the various gimmicks.

I'm not going to get into the politics of this - a cursory perusal of my blog should tell you what I think of Gore, Inhofe, science, science-denialism and deniers, and so on. I want to talk about Inhofe's "yes or no question" - and why it isn't one, and why the "gimmick" isn't in the answer, but the question.

There's a material (or informal) fallacy* called "begging the question", or in Latin petitio principi. The Latin means "a request for the premise" (and "begging the question" isn't a good translation, as it leads people to think it means "leading to another question") and it involves an argument in which the conclusion is actually part of its own support. An example would be a lawyer arguing that since the defendents show no remorse, they should be punished: Claiming that they should show remorse assumes their guilt; if they are innocent, why should they be remorseful?

But petitio principi can be found in many other guises. One that is extremely common is this that Inhofe used: hiding a premise in a subordinate or embedded clause.

Many people think of subordinate or embedded clauses as those that are introduced by a subordinating conjunction (such as because, when, unless), or a relative pronoun (that, which). However those subordinate clauses are only one type of embedded clauses. Infinitive clauses (I want him to sing now), pariticipial (-ING) clauses (He started singing his favorite song), mixed (I wanted him to start singing my favorite song), and THAT clauses (I think that he is a good singer) are others. Clauses create separate assertions in a sentence which can be true or false independent of each other. For instance, it may be false that he is a good singer, but true that I think he is.

Sentences with more than one clause are called "complex" sentences. By definition, complex sentences are not simple.

Questions which hide a premise inside an embedded clause are thus not simple questions. Such a question has not one, but two (or more), assertions inside it, and thus (at least) two assertions to be questioned. It assumes something to be true and asks a question based on that assumption. Claiming the question is a simple "yes or no question" is disingenuous at best - in order to answer the question in that way, the respondent must assent to the truth of the embedded clause. **

The classic example of this is, of course, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" To answer either "yes" or "no" you must accept as true the premise that you have in fact beaten your wife in the past. There is no way to answer this "yes" or "no" which says "I have never beaten my wife." The answer "yes" only means that you have stopped, while "no" only means that you have not yet stopped.

This question is composed of not one, but two clauses: I beat my wife - I have stopped. Thus there is a matrix of four ways to break it down by truth and falsity:

a - I beat my wife / I have stopped beating her
b - I beat my wife / I have not stopped beating her
c - I never beat my wife / I have stopped beating her
d - I never beat my wife / I have not stopped beating her

As you can see, statements c and d are actually meaningless. They aren't right or wrong, true or false: they have no meaning. You cannot stop doing something you have never done, nor can you continue to do it. The statements are nonsense.

When asked such a question you cannot answer it "yes or no": you must go to the embedded clause and deal with that. If your questioner demands a "yes or no", ask him to rephrase the question into one that can in fact be so answered, one that is not predicated on a premise you do not grant. In short - call him on his dishonesty.

Because it is dishonest. It is either stupid or disingenuous to pretend that such a question is a simple "yes or no question". Inhofe isn't stupid. Whatever you may think about the way he goes about his business or organizes his thoughts or politics, you will have to admit that he's not stupid: willful ignorance is not stupidity, though it plays on the stupidity of others. Inhofe knows what he's doing. His disingenuousness is dishonest.

Are you ready to change the way you live?

The "principio" being "petioed" here, if you will, the premise being requested, the assumption being hidden, the question being begged, is that there is something wrong with the way Gore lives. Answering "yes" clearly assents to that assumption; answering "no" does, too. Gore attempted to answer the underlying assumption - the embedded clause question of "does the way you live need changing" - in a way which would make the surface question - are you ready to change? - meaningless. Inhofe wouldn't let him. But Gore wouldn't fall for the fallacy.

So Inhofe pretends that Gore wouldn't answer the question, when the simple fact is, there was no single question being asked.

* This is technically not a logical fallacy, because the conclusion does indeed in some way follow from the premises, being identical to one of them. However, using a statement to prove itself is still a fallacy: "It's good because it's good"is not a valid argument.

** Of course, such questions can be other than "yes or no": "When are you going to stop lying?" is another common example, if easier to deal with in practice.