Wednesday, May 02, 2012

Wednesdays fallacies are full of woe

A couple more fallacies for Wednesday, both are really common in business and everyday life. I even had an example of the black or white fallacy yesterday, it happened when I was talking to someone about a new logo that we're designing for my company. They presented an option which I didn't like, they responded emotionally by saying "well if you don't like that you probably won't like anything I come up with". Presenting me with the black and white choice of either like x or like nothing. Obviously this argument doesn't take into account that I might absolutely love option y or option z, I'm sure most people have used that one often in conjunction with an appeal to emotion (I certainly have!)

APPEAL TO EMOTION - Manipulating an emotional response in place of a valid or compelling argument.

Appeals to emotion include appeals to fear, envy, hatred, pity, pride, and more. Though a valid argument may sometimes have an emotional aspect, one must be careful that emotion doesn’t replace sensible logic. Luke didn’t want to eat his sheep’s brains with chopped liver and brussel sprouts, but his father told him to think about the poor, starving children in a third world country who weren’t fortunate enough to have any food at all.

BLACK OR WHITE - Where two alternative states are presented as the only possibilities, when in fact more possibilities exist.

Also known as the false dilemma, this insidious tactic has the appearance of forming a logical argument, but under closer scrutiny it becomes evident that there are more possibilities than the either/or choice that is presented. Whilst rallying support for his plan to fundamentally undermine citizens’ rights, the Supreme Leader told the people they were either on his side, or on the side of the enemy.

5 comments:

Chairman Bill said...

Obviously, you can only be for or against the black and white fallacy.

Steve Borthwick said...

Well CB that's a bit of a grey area...

Archdruid Eileen said...

I'm shocked you could ever complain about appeals to emotion. Just think about all the people in the world who aren't very good at logic - what are they going to do without emotion?

Either you accept appeals to emotion, or you're a robot.

Chairman Bill said...

Bleep-bleep.

Steve Borthwick said...

AE, :) :) :) although I can't believe you advocate the slaughter of baby robots by removing their emotions, shame on you.