“MANY QUESTIONS”: A Semantic Fallacy?

1. « Many questions » as a dialectical fallacy

Many questions, or multiple questions, is also known as loaded questions. A question contains many questions when it « [makes] two questions into one » (id. 167b35; p. 22). The issue is examined by Aristotle in the context of a dialectical exchange, and in this context, it is considered a fallacious discursive maneuver, see fallacies.
Dialectic is the prototypical ortho-language. An ortho-language is a language game derived from ordinary language and interaction supplemented by a system of conventional rules that control linguistic production. These rules are proposed in order to preserve and expand the truth and guarantee the rationality of the dialogue, see  logic for dialogue.

Badly phrased dialectical questions

Consider a set consisting of bad things and good things (id., §5). The misleading question is: “Is the set good or bad?”. The answer “good” will be rejected by the presence of bad things, and the answer “bad” by the presence of good things (ibid.). The clever sophist will refute the answer yes by alleging the second component, and vice-versa. Hence, the importance of this case for the sophists, who hope in thus defeating the dialectical method of seeking truth.

The case of the half white and half black picture may be more convincing. The sophistical question is: “Is it (=the picture) black (resp. white)?” Since the dialectal convention imposes to answer « yes » or « no », they are each refuted respectively by focusing on the white (resp. black) part of the picture (id., §5).
In ordinary interactions, the sensible response to this question will probably be to observe that the question is awkwardy phrased, and to quickly clarify the issue by saying « some elements are white, and some are black« ; or  “this part is white and the other part is black”, ,or « some part are white, some ar black an some are light gray. »
One can imagine that the question “Is anger a good thing?” exhibits that kind of problem. The yes answer is refuted by any negative aspects of anger such as violence or lack of self-control, while the no answer is undermined by any instance of “righteous anger”.

For Aristotle, this situation shows that in « truth-seeking dialogue », ordinary exchanges need to be supplemented by specific rules, and that the question as it is violates these two rules (Aristotle’s Sophistical Refutation (RS), see Fallacies). [1] The first rule for that kind of dialectical game authorizes only yes/no answers. According to the second rule  the logical dialectical game requires the use of propositions, a proposition being defined as “a single statement about a single thing” (Aristotle, RS, 169a6; Tricot, p. 30). This guarantees the separate examination of every single elementary statement.
The fallacy of many questions is thus a clear example of fallacy defined as a breach of dialectical rules, S. Fallacies (2).

Questions in Everyday Speech

In ordinary language, sentences can have several layers of meaning. In dialectical truth- seeking dialogue, this linguistic resource cannot be exploited in dialectical truth-seeking dialogue. There is no need to import the dialectical rule as such in the analysis of ordinary argumentation. For example, rhetorical argumentation has no problem to treat confusing questions; they can be answered with clarifying answer, for example, with a conceptual dissociation or a distinguo.

Natural language questions can contain statements that can contain implicit statements that the speaker assumes to be true for the exchange and its participants. In most cases, this presupposed information serves as a reminder of relevant details related to the topic of the conversation. This information has the status of a thematic information (ancient, background information, while the sentence has the status of a topical information (new, foreground information), or, in the case of a question, the status of a contribution to producing new knowledge).
If the speaker erroneously assumes such background information, their conversation partner simply corrects them:

S1     – How was your weekend by the sea?
S2     – Oh, we had to postpone it to next week!

S1 is a loaded question since it implies that S2 had a week end by the see, but it is not a fallacy.

The so-called fallacy of many questions occur in polemical context. For example, consider the following exchange:

S1: — You should think about why your policy has failed
S2: — But my policy has not failed!

S2 rejects the presupposition of S1 “Your policy has failed« , see presupposition.

Claiming that the S1 question is fallacious, requires that the S2 policy has not failed, and to be an ally of S2. Claiming that the S1 question is legitimate, then, one has to assume that S2‘s policy has failed, that is, one has to be an ally to S2.

Aristotle’s solution is to forbid the use of such presupposition-loaded sentences in dialectic.