Page 38 - Gabrijela Kišiček and Igor Ž. Žagar (eds.), What do we know about the world? Rhetorical and argumentative perspectives, Digital Library, Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana 2013
P. 38
What Do We Know about the World?
In the real world of argument, many arguments are explicitly designed
to foster our emotions. Such arguments may rouse a team before a soccer
game, generate public concern about an invasive species, or foster sup-
port for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. While
specific examples of such arguments may go too far, it makes little sense
to say that they are in principle illegitimate, or that excitement, fear,
anger, disgust, hope, sympathy, and happiness should never play a role
supporting some conclusions and mitigating against others. In a poll
of scholars of American public address, Martin Luther King’s “I have a
dream” speech (American Rhetoric, 2012) has been ranked as the most
significant political speech of the 20th century. Delivered to over two
hundred thousand civil rights marchers at the Lincoln Memorial on Au-
gust 28th 1963, it was a defining moment in the American Civil Rights
Movement. The speech presents a powerful argument for civil rights
which cannot be understood apart from King’s success stirring the emo-
tional convictions of his audience.
The influence of the cognitive account of argument on argumenta-
tion theory is seen in the history of fallacy theory, which has treated ap-
peals to emotion as mistakes in argument. The standard list of fallacies
thus includes appeal to pity (ad misercordiam), appeal to flattery, attack-
ing the person (ad hominem), appeal to force (ad baculum) and, more
generally, appeal to emotion. Recent work on argument has made it in-
creasingly evident that this is too simple: that we cannot easily relegate
all appeals to emotion to the realm of fallacies, and that many such ap-
peals provide reasonable grounds for belief and action. To take one ex-
ample, Wreen (1988a and 1988b) has argued that appeal to force (ad ba-
culum) is an argument scheme that has rationally compelling instanc-
es. One cannot dismiss all instances of the scheme on the basis of the
claim that it is predicated on an appeal to fear, for fear may be reasona-
ble and may be a legitimate consideration in the drawing of conclusions.
If you tell me that I should give you my wallet because you will shoot me
with a gun in your hand if I don’t, then I would be acting unreasonably
if I did not accept this conclusion (telling someone with a gun that they
are committing the fallacy ad baculum is not a recommended course of
action). A number of other commentators have argued for a rethink-
ing of the fallacies that treats ad hominem and other fallacies associated
with emotions as legitimate forms of argument (see, e.g., Govier, 1983;
Groarke and Tindale, 1986; Hitchcock, 2006).
The role of emotion in argument is particularly salient if one’s goal
is a thick theory of argument, for such a theory must provide an over-
In the real world of argument, many arguments are explicitly designed
to foster our emotions. Such arguments may rouse a team before a soccer
game, generate public concern about an invasive species, or foster sup-
port for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. While
specific examples of such arguments may go too far, it makes little sense
to say that they are in principle illegitimate, or that excitement, fear,
anger, disgust, hope, sympathy, and happiness should never play a role
supporting some conclusions and mitigating against others. In a poll
of scholars of American public address, Martin Luther King’s “I have a
dream” speech (American Rhetoric, 2012) has been ranked as the most
significant political speech of the 20th century. Delivered to over two
hundred thousand civil rights marchers at the Lincoln Memorial on Au-
gust 28th 1963, it was a defining moment in the American Civil Rights
Movement. The speech presents a powerful argument for civil rights
which cannot be understood apart from King’s success stirring the emo-
tional convictions of his audience.
The influence of the cognitive account of argument on argumenta-
tion theory is seen in the history of fallacy theory, which has treated ap-
peals to emotion as mistakes in argument. The standard list of fallacies
thus includes appeal to pity (ad misercordiam), appeal to flattery, attack-
ing the person (ad hominem), appeal to force (ad baculum) and, more
generally, appeal to emotion. Recent work on argument has made it in-
creasingly evident that this is too simple: that we cannot easily relegate
all appeals to emotion to the realm of fallacies, and that many such ap-
peals provide reasonable grounds for belief and action. To take one ex-
ample, Wreen (1988a and 1988b) has argued that appeal to force (ad ba-
culum) is an argument scheme that has rationally compelling instanc-
es. One cannot dismiss all instances of the scheme on the basis of the
claim that it is predicated on an appeal to fear, for fear may be reasona-
ble and may be a legitimate consideration in the drawing of conclusions.
If you tell me that I should give you my wallet because you will shoot me
with a gun in your hand if I don’t, then I would be acting unreasonably
if I did not accept this conclusion (telling someone with a gun that they
are committing the fallacy ad baculum is not a recommended course of
action). A number of other commentators have argued for a rethink-
ing of the fallacies that treats ad hominem and other fallacies associated
with emotions as legitimate forms of argument (see, e.g., Govier, 1983;
Groarke and Tindale, 1986; Hitchcock, 2006).
The role of emotion in argument is particularly salient if one’s goal
is a thick theory of argument, for such a theory must provide an over-
