Appeal to Emotion

1). Discuss the idea of Appeal to Emotion. There are different aspects of Appeal to Emotion, which type of Appeal to Emotion strikes you, and why?

Premises in an argument that suggest that, “you should believe or do something because you feel a certain way” (Epstein) are called appeals to emotions and we should never fully accept an argument based on these appeals to emotions, until we have put further thought into whether they are good or bad.

 There are four different types of appeals to emotions that appear in arguments:

·      Appeal to pity: an argument to convince, by making an individual feel sorry or pity towards something.

·      Appeal to fear: an argument to convince, by tapping into an individual’s fear.

·      Appeal to spite: an argument to convince, by the hopes of revenge (two wrongs make a right) or by convincing that “you should do or believe something because you owe the person a favor.”

·      Appeal to vanity: an argument to convince, by making you feel good about yourself. You should do or believe this, because it makes you feel good.

These four types of appeals to emotions are all ones with prescriptive conclusions, which can either be good or bad. When we have prescriptive conclusions we can better identify whether or not new premises should be added to the argument, and they help us to see whether the argument is good or bad.

Appeals to emotions, which are never good are ones that have descriptive conclusions. Descriptive conclusions try to convince based off things such as wishful thinking.

In addition, the appeal to emotion that stood out to me was appealing to pity because I see this tactic used all the time in television commercials.  They show polar bears stranded on floating ice blocks in the middle of the sea, animals who are strays and pitiful, and children in third world countries that need our help.  This type of appeal to emotion makes one want to pick up the phone, even if we can’t afford it, to help these animals and people. In some cases, these commercials even say, “you are the one that will make this difference” “you are the one that will change their lives forever.” This however, isn’t necessarily true as there are other organizations and people that can make a difference and help these people and animals; they are just appealing to pity to convince you that the only way to help the cause is if you, individually, help them.  This of course isn’t the case, and we need to understand that we can’t help every organization because it appeals to pity, we can make a difference in this world in other ways as well.