1. Write a bad argument in favor of affirmative action whose only premises appeal to pity.
My best friend, Carolyn got into an argument with one of her friend, Kelly. This is what they said to each other when they were arguing:
Kelly: "you never care about how I feel!"
Carolyn: "if I don't care about how you feel, why would I ask you what's wrong?"
Kelly: "because you're only pitying me"
Carolyn: "why would I pity a friend? you already know that I'm straight up and I don't go around the bushes to tell you what I think of you. Friends tell you the things you need to hear, and not what you want to hear."
From this, we can see that Kelly's argument is bad because she is arguing back based on her emotions rather than using her logic and senses. Her premises is unstated and it appeals to pity too.
I believe you are correct about Kelly's argument. She appears to be using an appeal to pity rather than reason in countering Carolyn's argument. Did Kelly feel there was a winner and loser in this?
ReplyDeleteWhen I argue with close friends or family it seems this is often the case. But, to view it from the outside, my brother and my mother have had verbal fights with such strong emotion that I don't want to be there. Pity is not a strategy, but they generally include in an appeal to emotion - and often include "You always..." or "You never..." They are generally about emotional topics - although this can range from what time the kids (grandkids) go to bed through some highly significant topics. (what makes the topic emotional is the energy invested in getting your way). The trick is to avoid the winner/loser dichotomy as much as possible.
Wow, I really liked this example of arguing through emotions. I thought in this scenario, emotions appeared to be a lot weaker because it did not have enough evidence to support her claims. However, Carolyn who used reasoning to appear much stronger at getting her claims across. I wonder if emotion can better in arguments than logical reasoning. It’s very interesting how our emotions tell us that the person is wrong, but through logical reasoning can be convince that they are wrong. I know with my friends that sometimes they are wrong because it is something they did morally that is wrong even if there reasoning make sesnse.
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