From: Paul Logasa Bogen II
Date: Jul 7, 2006 12:18 PM
Subject: Semantic Fallacy

It seems you are in a semantic fallacy. If I tell a person playing a
game of Simon Says and I say "shake a leg" I am not using the idiom.
Even more than a person saying that begs the question... Just because
philosophers (not even in English) have said the assemblage of words
"Begs the Question" means "a form of logical fallacy in which an
argument is assumed to be true without evidence other than the argument
itself." Does not mean that it is the only possible meaning. After all
if you have learned anything from logic is that natural language is
ambiguous. In fact, I suggest a new campaign. Stop people from using
"or" when they mean "exclusive or" after all logicians usually use it to
mean "inclusive or" and there is definitely a huge loss to logic if we
let people use "or" in a way we don't like.

Paul Logasa Bogen II
Doctoral Student
Center for the Study of Digital Libraries
Texas A&M University