Friday, November 5, 2010

Week 7 Post 1: Appeals to Emotions


There are so many types of appeals to emotions from Epstein’s text. It is stated that appeal to emotions means “An argument is just a premise that says, roughly, you should believe or do something because you feel a certain way. Often we call the entire argument in which such a premise appears an appeal to emotion.” The appeal that sticks out to me the most “appeal to spite.” This appeal got my attention because it comes shows me that people will really try to get revenge on people because they didn’t help you do something in return.  This in our society seems to be happening with people always in the background trying to pull someone down. It gives a sense of Karma. This to me says that we have to “please” everyone, or else its going to come back to us because we didn’t help them in the first place. I think it is also a bad thing because that also means we have to agree and do what we don’t want to. To make it fair I believe that to even it out, we should only agree and do what we think is right and not just ignore them because the person didn’t help you before. 

2 comments:

  1. Good post on discussing the emotion appeal to spite. I like how you connected the emotion and appeal to karma and society and how people react to the emotion. I would have to agree as well that the appeal of spite does connect to karma and how we treat each other. In addition to that, I would say that when you said "that also means we have to agree and do what we don't want to do" also a plays a part in our reasoning to convince us to do certain things. It is like another part of the argument that convinces us to react to the arguments, claims, and reasoning that appeal to our emotion to spite.

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  2. I think you did a really good job on appealing to spite. Appeal to spite was one of the appeal to emotion that didn't stand out to me. To me appeal to spite has one of the least impact out of the emotions. I think connecting it to karma made it seem like a stronger appeal. To me it doesn't stand out like appeal to vanity or appeal to pity does have over our reasoning. I guess if you're a strong believe in what goes around/comes around then appealing to spite would have a bigger role on reasoning. You did made appeal to spite clearer for me.

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