Friday, November 5, 2010
Objective 6
According to chapter 10 of the textbook, "Appeal to spite, the hope of revenge, is invariably rejected as bad by some people on moral grounds." In appeal to spite, spite is substituted for evidence when an argument is made against a claim. Appeals to spite can very often be found in political speeches and also in every day conversation. One example of appeal to spite that I found was: "If you decide to vote in favor of this tax cut, the wealthy will just have more money, while middle class citizens like us will continue to struggle to get by." The argument here is that, "you should not vote in favor of the tax cut because it will just let the wealthy keep more money." This statement would not be considered a good argument as is. The premise needed to make this argument strong is "you should not vote in favor of something that does not benefit you."
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Hi Kenny!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that the argument would not be a good one if you don't target the first party's emotions of spite. From your example, I would be more likely to not vote in favor for something that does not benefit me versus not voting for the tax cut simply because it lets the wealthy keep more money. Because the first statement targets more of the emotions in myself, I would be more likely to fall for that example of appeal to spite, whereas I might just vaguely intake the wealth statement as something that doesn't refer to me. In addition to that, I also agree with you that this appeal usually shows up in every day conversations as well as political speeches / issues. Great job with this post!