Chapter 11 "A summary of bad arguments" in the book Critical Thinking, talks about the different fallacies we see in arguments. The book defines a fallacy as, "a bad argument of one of the types that have been agreed to be typically unrepairable." One of the fallacies that i am very familiar with is the appeal to emotion. For an argument, the concluding claim should not be a descritpive claim relating to emotions. Emotions are subjective and make for weak factual arguments. An example of this fallacy would be the good ol' saying, "Drink your sorrows away." The quote means that if somebody is sad about something, then they should just get drunk to make it feel better. Because it appeals to somebody's emotions, this statement is clearly a fallacy. On top of that, we already know that drinking doesn't solve anything so we know that this is a bad argument.
And boom goes the dynamite,
Melvin Banner
Hi Melvin!
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post and I thought you used the perfect example to enhance your understanding. I agree that fallacies goes hand in hand with our emotions. After all, emotions are totally hard to control and should be distant away from our claims in an argument. Emotions cannot tie in with "factual arguments" and hence makes a great fallacy. The example you used can be true to some people but only because it's due to their emotions. Some people in this world do feel as if alcohol is their only cure to sorrows but to some, it's a nuisance. People all have different ways with dealing with their sorrows and make alcohol as the primary placebo, it's definitely makes it a bad agreement. Good findings =)
I liked your post as it describes the appeal to emotion clearly. Violating the principle of rational discussion was interesting. I also wrote on it but on a different subtopic, which was begging the question. I think that it is not rational to manipulate or influence others by taking advantage of their emotional side. We are all emotional and can be deceived by emotional statements easily. By getting emotional we can believe what the other person is saying or we can believe the advertisements which also use this violation. Your example about ‘drink your sorrows away’ was also impressive. Overall, you made a good effort!
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ReplyDeleteHi Melven,
ReplyDeleteYour post explains the appeal to emotion perfectly. The example really helped in clearing it. As Linda agreed to in one of the comments, emotions are very difficult to control and they tend to change our judgement. A factual argument should be cleared out from any emotions effects and therefore emotions tend to change the argument into a fallacy.
Whenever a claim maker involves emotions, it might be an indicator that the argument lacks some supporting facts and he/she is trying to gain the receptors empathy to support his argument
Thanks for explaining it clearly
Best Regards,
- Foudz