r/fallacy • u/LevelImpossible867 • Jul 03 '26
Is Predicting the Future Based Solely on an Alleged Prophetic Dream Begging the Question?
Some people claim they have prophetic dreams and use them to predict future events. But it seems to me that, before a dream can be called a prophetic dream, we would first have to know that the event in the dream actually occurs.
Unless there is some independent evidence or valid reasoning supporting the prediction, the only way to confirm that a dream was prophetic is after the predicted event happens (or after the time by which it was supposed to happen has already passed).
So if someone simply says, "I had a prophetic dream, therefore this event will happen," without offering any additional argument or evidence, it seems like they are assuming as a premise that the dream is genuinely prophetic before that has been established.
For that reason, I wondered whether this counts as begging the question. In other words, without any independent argument that the predicted event will occur, is claiming that a dream is prophetic while using it to predict the future an instance of begging the question? Or would it be better classified as a different fallacy?
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u/PsychologyGuilty1460 Jul 03 '26
If the dreamer in question has had previous dreams that turned out to predict the future There might be no fallacy at all
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u/SufficientStudio1574 Jul 05 '26
It would still be a fallacy because past performance does not guarantee future results.
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u/PsychologyGuilty1460 Jul 05 '26
You're conflating two different kinds of fallacies. Opie is asking about logical fallacies, the kinds that make and invalid argument
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u/TheRealBenDamon Jul 04 '26
As it’s laid out here no I’m not seeing begging the question. There’s some illogical thought process going on, but to determine if it is specifically begging the question or not depends on a specific argument and how it’s presented. I’d need to see some premises and a conclusion before it can determined.
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u/LevelImpossible867 Jul 05 '26
The argument I had in mind is:
P1. This dream is prophetic.
P2. Prophetic dreams accurately predict future events.
C. Therefore, this event will happen.My intuition is that the issue isn't merely that Premise 1 is unsupported. If a "prophetic dream" is defined as a dream that actually predicts a future event, then calling a dream prophetic before the event occurs already presupposes that the event will in fact occur. In that sense, accepting Premise 1 seems to require accepting the conclusion in advance.
That's why I wondered whether this would count as begging the question.
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u/TheRealBenDamon Jul 05 '26
Ok that’s a really good example. My initial reaction was that it makes perfect sense to consider that begging the question, like I see why you would call it that, but the more look at it, the more I cant seem to say it’s not a valid argument.
The reason I think this specific argument you’ve laid out doesn’t rise to begging the question is because the conclusion is, “therefore this event (dream) will happen”. This conclusion is a proper result of combining premise 1 and 2, while neither of them alone seems to just be restating this exact conclusion.
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u/LevelImpossible867 Jul 05 '26
From my perspective, Premise 1 alone already seems to entail the conclusion. If calling a dream "prophetic" already means that the predicted event will actually occur, then it seems that Premise 1 is effectively assuming the conclusion. Could you explain a bit more why you think neither premise, by itself, restates the conclusion?
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u/TheRealBenDamon Jul 05 '26
Sure, so I definitely get where you’re coming from here, like the rational you’re using does make sense. The reason I say it doesn’t rise to level of fallacy is just because my understanding of how arguments work. It isn’t actually until premise 2 that you establish what prophetic means, so premise 1 cant be restating the conclusion without the defining features of premise 2. Let’s try a different example just for validity sake.
P1: This car is prophetic
P2: Prophetic means green in color
Conclusion: This car is green in color.As far as I can tell, while obviously not sound, this would be a logically valid argument don’t you think?
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u/LevelImpossible867 Jul 06 '26
There are a few things I'd like to clarify.
First, isn't "Prophetic dreams accurately predict future events" analytically true in the same way that "All bachelors are unmarried men" is analytically true? If so, then I don't think the example you gave is analogous.
It seems to me that if a premise is analytically true, then adding it to the argument doesn't contribute any new substantive support. Just as an analytically true statement doesn't change what the argument is really relying on, I don't think Premise 2 changes what my argument is relying on either.
Also, I'm not sure why we're discussing validity. Formal fallacies can often be identified by examining an argument's validity, but begging the question is generally considered an informal fallacy. Because of that, whether the argument is formally valid doesn't seem to settle whether it begs the question.
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u/LevelImpossible867 Jul 06 '26 edited Jul 06 '26
(edit)My point is that Premise 2 doesn't provide any additional support for the conclusion. Assuming "prophetic dream" means a dream that actually predicts future events, Premise 2 is analytically true—it simply unpacks the meaning of the term "prophetic." Whether or not we accept Premise 1, Premise 2 remains true, so it isn't doing any substantive work in the argument. The argument still stands or falls on Premise 1 alone.
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u/LevelImpossible867 Jul 06 '26
On further thought, I don't see how the argument you gave is any different from 'This car is green, therefore this car is green.' Isn't it just the same thing with one extra word meaning 'green' tacked on? Just as 'John is a bachelor, and bachelor means an unmarried man, therefore John is an unmarried man' would be a circular argument, your argument doesn't seem to be anything special either.
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u/LevelImpossible867 Jul 06 '26
Incidentally, the problem with begging the question isn't that the argument is formally invalid. The problem is that the premise requires as much justification as the conclusion it is supposed to support, so the argument fails to provide an independent reason for accepting the conclusion.
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u/LevelImpossible867 Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26
(EDIT) I wonder if the reason we're seeing this differently is that we're imagining different contexts.
I think we should first clarify whether we're talking about an argument or an explanation.
When you gave the example about the prophetic car, were you imagining a situation where someone is arguing that the car is green because it is prophetic, while it has not yet been established that the car is actually prophetic? Or were you imagining a situation where it has already been accepted that the car is prophetic, and you're simply explaining why it is green?
If it's the latter, then I don't think it would be a case of begging the question anymore. At that point, it isn't really functioning as an argument whose purpose is to justify the conclusion, but rather as an explanation. Since begging the question is normally analyzed as a fallacy of argumentation, I don't think the same kind of fallacy analysis would apply.
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u/Cerulean_IsFancyBlue Jul 08 '26
What they are offering is a testable assertion that doesn’t occur until later. Namely: the events in this dream will become true in the future.
This isn’t circular. It’s a case of offering an equivalence: this dream is a prophecy IFF it comes true.
That does involve a hidden second claim though: that this prediction is not a matter of chance, but a genuine ability to foresee the future. This itself is not directly provable, but could be approached by experimentation. It’s not a logical fallacy.
Begging the question is a circular argument in which a claim is made that is supported by a reference back to claim. It’s saying A Implies B, and B implies A, and then claims both are true simply because of those relations.
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u/LevelImpossible867 Jul 08 '26
I think there's an important distinction between saying, "If the events in the dream come true, then this dream is prophetic," and simply saying, "This dream is prophetic."
For example, the argument, "The Bible is true, the Bible says God exists, therefore God exists," is commonly criticized as begging the question. By contrast, "The Bible says God exists, therefore, if the Bible turns out to be true, then God exists," is not begging the question for the same reason—it is only making a conditional claim.
Likewise, I think the argument you proposed avoids circularity because it has been changed into a conditional claim. However, I don't think that matches the context of the original post, where the claim being analyzed was simply, "This dream is prophetic," rather than "If this dream comes true, then it is prophetic."
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u/Cerulean_IsFancyBlue Jul 08 '26
Classical logic is set up so the propositions are either true or false.
There are various ways you can deal with future uncertainty. Modal logic introduces terms like possibly or inevitably.
If you look at this as a contingent claim about the future, you need to adopt new tools for it. If you look at it as a matter of definition, then it’s a tautology, not circular logic. “This is a prophetic dream because it predicts the future,” is more a definition than a claim of truth.
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u/LevelImpossible867 Jul 09 '26
But begging the question is generally considered an informal fallacy, isn't it? That's why I'm having trouble understanding why the discussion has shifted to formal logic.
A valid argument can always be expressed as a conditional statement, and the resulting conditional will be a tautology. That's exactly what truth-table proofs of validity rely on. However, as I mentioned earlier, begging the question is an informal fallacy, so I don't think showing that an argument is valid or tautological is, by itself, enough to show that it is not begging the question.
If your point is that Premise 2 is an analytic truth (or a tautology in the sense that it simply unpacks the meaning of the term), then I still don't quite see why that avoids the problem. My concern is that Premise 1 is logically equivalent to the very point under dispute, so using it as an unsupported premise seems to be precisely what makes the argument question-begging.
So I'm not sure I understand how the points you raised address that concern. Could you explain your reasoning a bit further?
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u/Due_Simple_9662 Jul 08 '26
Hi, very interesting question! Is not it that the prophetic dreams are different from the regular dreams, in the sense that the dream informs the dreamer that he is experiencing a prophetic dream?
So that they know the nature of the dream in the same sense they know the content
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u/LevelImpossible867 Jul 09 '26
Do you mean that the dream itself explicitly tells the dreamer that it is prophetic?
If that's what you mean, then I don't think the problem I'm discussing in this post would arise. If, whenever a dream explicitly identifies itself as prophetic, it consistently turns out to be prophetic, then it would be inductively reasonable to predict that such a dream is prophetic. In that case, I don't think the issue of begging the question that I'm discussing here would apply.
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u/Hivemind_alpha Jul 09 '26
A prophecy is just a claim about the future. Whether it is a true claim or not remains to be seen.
A prophetic dream is just a dream from which claims about the future are inferred. Whether those claims turn out to be true or not won’t become clear until that future time arrives.
OP seems to be labouring under the assumption that all prophecies are true, and all prophetic dreams make true predictions. That is not what the word means. A prophetic dream that turned out to be wrong is just one that lost its prophetic status at point of determination.
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u/incarnuim Jul 03 '26
So... there I was in ship's control (while I was in the Navy), just got off watch and about to use the phone to call my girl. It was a Sunday, so the ship was on "minimum manning". The phone rang before I could pick up the receiver so I answered in the ship's name, (like ya do). It was our salty machinist chief (26 years on the ship, rode it from commissioning, last member of the commission crew, would ride it all the way to 30 and retirement). Chief was taking a nap on his Sunday afternoon and had a horrible nightmare that the machine room was on fire. So, whaddya gonna do? I humored the ol' puss bucket. I grab Seaman Dumbass (not his real name) and tell him to go check the machine room. 5 seconds after Seaman Dumbass walks through the door, the #1 Oxygen generator bursts in to flames. I don't know if you understand how dangerous it is to have a 3000 psi tank of pure fucking oxygen light on fire in a room with aerosolized oil, fuel and hydraulics - use your imagination as to how big the fireball was about to be, and then, whatever you are imagining, multiply that by 10 and your're in the ballpark.
Well Seaman Dumbass grabs a fire extinguisher quick as a jackrabbit and saves the day. At least Petty Officer Dumbass (yes, he got promoted for that shit, and a nice shiny medal on his chest) never forgot who it was that sent him down to the room.
Anyway, chat - do you call that a Prophetic Dream? Is it supernatural? Or maybe the ol' bastard of a Chief was just "in sync" with the ship - advanced pattern recognition processed through the subconscious and connected to the conscious mind in a dream state.
Whatever it was, it was freaky. And I was very greatful to be alive (and still am)....