Friday, November 5, 2010
Objective #1
Out of the objectives, I chose to work on Objective #1, which is "Write a bad argument in favor of affirmative action who only premises appeal to pity." Appeal to pity is a type of appeal to emotion, when people triy to get sympathy or pity from the person they are talking to in an argument. After completing the social organizations project, I know a little about PETA's platform. An example of a bad argument would be if PETA said, "We should all try and protect animals from harm. Animals have rights too, how would you feel if you were forced to be used as entertainment? Or how would you feel if scientists would use you in experiments against your will? This is the kind of cruelty animals go through. You don't want animals to suffer right? Please donate some money or your time to help join the fight against animal cruelty." This is a bad argument because its only premises appeal to pity. The argument has to have more plausibly premises. If the argument gave more information about what PETA stood for, it would probably be a much better argument.
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I think appeal to pity is a really strong type of appeal to emotion. I agree tat PETA uses mostly appeal to pity in their claims and arguments. In that particular quotation, there isn't any real premises outside of appealing to pity. Sometimes appealing to pity as a premise is all you need. I think this argument was kind of strong. Pity does have a lot of influence over your choices and reasoning. I think this argument also uses appeal to fear. The part where they mention "how would you feel..." can appeal to fear and pity. But overall I agree that it is not that great an argument.
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