Appeal to Fear

Exercise #3: According to Epstein "Appealing to fear is a way politicians and advertisers manipulate people" by making them feel scared of the consequences they may face if they do not follow the advertiser's advice or directions.
An example of this are the recent commercials for All State Insurance. They are a series of commercials starring the same actor. The actor poses as the dangers every car owner may face. In one commercial he pretends to be a teenage girl driving a big pink truck in what seems to be a parking lot of a shopping mall. The teenage girl is on the phone with a friend and finds out that a boy she likes kissed her friend. This makes her emotionally distraught and so the actor dramatizes this situation and drives the pink truck into a parked car. He then explains that with cut-rate insurance the owner of the parked car will have to pay for the damages themselves because they are not covered. All State will cover these kinds of accidents and apparently any other kind of damages.
This is an example of appealing to fear because people watching the commercial will realize that this could happen to them and their insurance will probably not cover the damages. They will be scared by the fact that they will have to pay thousands of dollars in damages for an accident they had nothing to do with. Because of these fears and worries they will switch to All State and feel at ease.

Appeal to Emotion

 According to Epstein "an appeal to emotion in an argument is just a premise that says, roughly, you should believe or do something because you feel a certain way."
In other words an argument can appeal to your emotions by making you, for example, feel sad, happy, guilty, or happy. By making you feel a certain way they will get you to act upon those emotions and persuade you to do something about how you are feeling.
Epstein touches upon different types of appeals to emotion. The ones who discussed were appeal to fear, appeal to spite, arguments that "call in your debts", feel-good arguments, appeal to vanity, and wishful thinking.
The one I found most interesting was an argument with an appeal to vanity because it seems to be the most common one used in commercials. A famous example of commercials that appeal to the audience's vanity are L'oreal commercials. At the end of each commercial the model leading looks into the camera, smiles, and says "because you're worth it." L'oreal has been using their trademark phrase for quite a long time and it is used convince their future customers that they deserve to be using L'oreal's quality products. And this is an example of appeal to vanity because Epstein defined this as "our wanting to feel good about ourselves." According to L'oreal a woman should use their makeup and other cosmetic products they are worth the price and time. They deserve to look good and be happy. This tactic seems to be most prominent in commercials targeted at a female audience. I think that this is both a bad and good way to convince someone. I think it is bad because it seems more superficial than anything and only leads to selfishness instead of helping society. I also think it is a good tactic because everyone deserves to treat themselves once in a while and it's important to remind those who don't have much time for themselves.

Reasoning in a Chain and the Slippery Slope

One of the concepts that we have learned so far that I believe needs a bit more explanation is the fine line between reasoning in a chain and the slippery slope. According to Epstein reasoning in a chain usually makes a good good argument if the claims and premises make sense and are plausible. An example could be "If I don't get the brakes of my car fixed, I will not be able to go to school tomorrow. If I don't go to school tomorrow then I will miss my philosophy midterm and fail the class. So if I don't get the brakes of my car fixed now I will fail my philosophy midterm. This would be a reasonable argument because the premises and the conclusion are plausible. However these chain arguments can quickly turn into slippery slope which are bad arguments. For example if the same argument turned to "If I don't get the brakes of my car fixed, I will not be able to go to school tomorrow. If I don't go to school tomorrow I will miss my philosophy midterm and fail the class. If I fail my philosophy midterm I will never get into the animation program. And If I don't get into the program I will drop out of school and become a failure. So if I don't get the brakes of my car fixed I will be a loser."
According to a website about slippery slope arguments by Rick Arlikov, "the slippery slope argument is clearly invalid if it is meant to be a point of logic, for it does not follow that "if b is an exception to A, then no part of A is true." The slippery slope cannot be used logically because it does not follow the rules of a good argument.
http://www.garlikov.com/philosophy/slope.htm

News and Politics

I found that our first assignment about news and politics was helpful in breaking down editorials. It helped me differentiate the writer's argument from their opposing view. It also helped me in understanding what the editorial's main claim was and how they used details and facts to support their view. I also noticed that in order to make a good argument and to win over the audience, a good writer states facts from both sides of the argument. They do not force their view onto the reader rather they state the facts the way they are and make the readers think for themselves based on those supporting details. Finally I learned that not all articles or editorials from major news websites are right. It's important to analyze what we read thoroughly to understand what the writer is trying to convey. It is the reader's choice whether they think the article is correct and is worth standing for. This is why the project was useful. It helped me apply Epstein's teaching to every day life and current events.

Chapter 8

In Chapter 8,  I learned about general claims and their contradictory. General claims are vague arguments that have little precision or detail. They most commonly use the words "all" and "some". These arguments leave out a lot of important details that could support or refute their claim.  For example, my English professor last semester said during one of his random discussions "all smart women can change the oil of their own car. My daughter knows how to change the oil of her car. Therefore my daughter is a smart woman." According to Epstein "all" means every single one, no exceptions. But my professor's argument was bad because it is too general to be plausible. Just because his daughter knows how to change the oil of her car it does not mean that she is knowledgeable about everything. Being able to change the oil of a car could make you knowledgeable about cars but it does not make you an expert either. A woman could know how to change the oil in her car but that could be because someone taught her and not because she knows quantum physics.
The contradictory phrases of the word "all" are "some are not" and "not every". For the word "some", the opposites would be "no", "all are not", and "not even one". The contradictory of my professors argument could be "Not every smart woman can change the oil of their own car..."

Reasoning in a Chain

In chapter six, Epstein talks about the different kinds of reasoning. One them is reasoning in a chain with conditional which means "If A, then B. If B, then C. So if A, then C. An real life example of a chain reasoning could be if I do not finish my homework, then I will fail my art class. If I fail my art class I will not be accepted into the animation program. So if I do not finish my homework, I will not be accepted into the animation program.
In this section, Epstein also explains what the "slippery slope" is. The slippery slope argument "is a bad argument that uses a chain of conditionals, at least one of which is false or dubious." So if I changed one of my claims in my reasoning to "If I fail my art class, then I will be the biggest failure at school." my reasoning would be a slippery slope argument because the last part is not necessarily true and does not make sense. This would also make my argument bad.

Chapter 7: Counterarguments

In chapter 7, Epstein introduces how arguments can be refuted and contradicted. The first point in the chapter is "Raising Objections". This talks about how every claim can raise an objection. For example, last Christmas my brother tried to convince my parents to buy him a Playstation 3. Their conversation went something like this:
Brother: We should get a PS3 this Christmas. It would make a great present for the whole family.
Parents: We already have a Wii and the PS3 costs at least $300. (objection)
Brother: Yes, but the PS3 has a Blue Ray player. (objection)
Parents: We don't need that we already have a DVD player. (objection)
Brother: But Blue Rays have much better sound and picture, plus PS3 games have amazing graphics. (objection)
Parents: Blue Rays are much more expensive and so are the games. The system plus the game would cost a fortune in the end. (objection)
Brother: We can rent the Blue Rays on Netflix for almost nothing. (objection)
I've earned good grades this year and we could get games like Rock Band so the whole family can play and have fun. (answer)
Parents: We'll think about it.
According to Epstein, this conversation would also be an example of refuting an argument directly. My parents gave points to refute each of my brother's reasons and vice versa.