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NebXan t1_itiieyi wrote

Reply to comment by MSGRiley in A Proposal to Price Everything in the Currency of Child Lives Not Saved by phileconomicus

You're addressing arguments that I haven't made. Clearly, the author is making assumptions here, you can take issue with them if you wish. I'm simply pointing out that no appeal to emotion fallacy has been committed.

As I see it, the main assumptions the author makes are: A) that saving more childrens' lives is preferable to saving fewer, B) that redirecting more wealth to children's charities will save the lives of more children, and C) that using appeals to emotion can be an effective way to convince people to redirect more wealth to children's charities.

If all of these assumptions are true, then one can logically conclude that appeals to emotion can be used effectively to achieve preferable outcomes. That's the argument the author is making; you can agree or disagree with the premises, but there's no logical fallacy present there.

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MSGRiley t1_itjgrp7 wrote

>A) that saving more childrens' lives is preferable to saving fewer, B) that redirecting more wealth to children's charities will save the lives of more children

This is the appeal to emotion. There's no argument that connects those two things. As I said in another discussion in this thread, you may as well couch this decision in terms of

A. Saving children's lives is preferable to not.

B. Voting Republican saves more children's lives.

And then just arguing that saying "vote Republican to save children's lives" is an effective way to convince people to vote Republican. The inference being that voting Republican is the way to save children's lives.

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Simple_Rules t1_itinmwt wrote

You seem to be trying to argue that if an appeal to emotion is effective, it isn't a fallacy.

This is incorrect.

Fallacies are actually quite effective as far as rhetorical techniques go. The entire premise of "we should price coffees in fractions of a childs life" is blatantly an appeal to emotion, so much so that even in your attempt to defend it, you gave up on finding a way to word what it is other than calling it an appeal to emotion.

I suppose you could attempt to argue that the author is merely claiming that OTHER PEOPLE should employ the fallacy FOR THEM, but that's pretty absurd. If the author convinces some other person to actually do the appeal to emotion, they still were advocating for the use of the fallacy.

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Dark_Clark t1_itivv7q wrote

That is not what this person is saying. They are saying that even though the argument relies on premises that you may disagree with, your issue should be with the premises and not the validity of the argument since there is no fallacy being committed.

“Appeals to emotion can lead us to preferable outcomes” appears to be the author’s conclusion and it’s arrived at without employing an appeal to emotion fallacy despite the fact that the conclusion is about appeals to emotion.

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[deleted] t1_itivau9 wrote

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BernardJOrtcutt t1_itn1hjc wrote

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