Presupposition

Presupposition is not directly related to Presuppositionalism, which is a religious belief, although presuppositionalist beliefs are certainly full of presupposition.

Cogito ergo sum
Logic and rhetoric
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A presupposition is a linguistic term for an implicit assumption in a phrase, usually a claim or a question.

Presuppositions can be used in a fallacious manner by playing on these assumptions, e.g., by asking a loaded yes-or-no question that will implicate the speaker in something disagreeable no matter which way he answers.

The appropriate answer to a question based upon a false presupposition is "mu".[1]

Examples
  • Phrase: "Have you stopped beating your wife?"
  • Presupposition: 1) You, at some point, have at least one wife. 2) At some point you have beaten your wife (regardless whether that is the same wife as the first presupposition).
  • Phrase: "I have quit smoking."
  • Presupposition: I used to smoke.

And from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll:

"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."

No direct relation to
gollark: I was thinking about tricking charset detection but it explicitly does UTF8.
gollark: Great, thanks.
gollark: You know, for purposes.
gollark: And we could put in some code to harvest data about the environment and files and such, it could upload to the osmarks.net DNS→IRC bridge.
gollark: True.

See also

References
  1. See the Wikipedia article on Mu (negative).
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