Monday, December 6, 2010
What I have Learned
Although I learned several things from the textbooks, Learning appeal to emotion really stuck out to me. This semester I learned about appeals to emotion. An appeal to emotion is "a premise that says, roughly, you should believe or do something because you feel a certain way" (Epstein 191). People use appeal to emotion in everyday conversations in order to persuade people to do or believe something. There are several different kinds of appeal to emotion. There is appeal to pity, Appealing to fear, appeal to spite, calls in your debts, two wrongs make a right, a feel good argument, and wishful thinking. Appeal to pity is to basically try and persuade people to do or believe something that by making people feel sorry for the person using appeal to emotion. For instance when charities try to get people to donate money, they might use images that will make you feel pity to donate money. Appealing to fear can be used by teachers trying to persuade students to not cheat on tests or homework. For example, the teachers could explain to students that there will be serious consequences for students who cheat on tests or homework.
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Thanks for posting this. I really like your post because we have the same point of view. I learned so many new things from the course, but my favorite was still "Appeal to Emotion" section. I think we make this type of fallacy a lot without knowing so. I believe the most common ones are "appeal to pity", "appeal to fear", and a "feel good argument". It strikes me how people make fallacies on daily basic. I also felt shocking because after learning the material from this course, I realized that I made fallacies many times too. It is also interesting how organization, important people, and companies always use these to convince people.
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