An overview of persuasive appeals
and logical fallacies
• What are they:
• Logical fallacies are errors in reasoning that render an argument invalid
• Why study them?:
• pointing out a logical fallacy is a way of removing an argument from the
debate rather than just weakening it
• if you can show that the original argument actually commits a logical
fallacy, you put the opposition in the position of justifying why their
original argument should be considered at all.
• You will study and learn
more about these during your
final presentations, but some
common fallacies are:
Fallacies
Ad hominem
Hasty Generalization
Damning the Origin
Non-sequitor
Ad Populum
Sweeping
Generalization
Bandwagon Fallacy
Post-Hoc Propter Hoc
Begging the
question
Slippery Slope
Circular Reasoning
Red Herring
Either/ Or reasoning Pointing to Another
Wrong
Straw Man Fallacy
Over-precision
Unnecessary
Vagueness
• Do NOT claim too much:
• No writing will completely solve or even fully address all problems in a
complex topic: so don’t try to.
• Do NOT oversimplify complex issues
• Reducing a complex issue to its most simplistic form ruins your credibility
and will diminish the little ethos you have as a student writer
• Support your argument with concrete evidence and specific
proposals
• Don’t use abstract generalizations and familiar sentiments; always assume
that your audience is skeptical.
• Just as you can spot errors in logical arguments, you can also spot appeals
made to persuade audiences.
• You already know there:
• Ethos
• Logos
• Pathos
• These are deemed the classical appeals, because they date back to the classical
era and are the foundation of any other persuasive appeal
• Why study them?
• You want to be able to point these out when analyzing a another author’s arguments
• Being able to point out how they are persuading their audience, other than using
the classical appeals, is a great way to evaluate and analyze the arguments they
are making -> Might be asked to do this on the AP test
• You want to be able to use these in your own persuasive writing
• Consciously knowing that you are appealing to some aspect of your audience
makes much more effective persuasion than accidently getting lucky.
• Common Sense -- this is similar to the appeal to reason and
indeed will often begin "it's only logical", but it is not based on
chains of ideas.
• Rather it uses assumptions that don't have to be proved because
"everyone knows" and then draws conclusions from those assumptions.
• Experience -- this appeal invites the audience to "draw your
own conclusions" based on the audience's own personal
experience of the world.
• This is similar to the appeal to Common Sense, in that the Persona uses
Universality -- "everyone has had this experience", just as "everyone
knows" some fact.
• Authority -- this appeal intimidates the audience, in a sense, by telling them
that someone or something says they have to do whatever the argument
claims.
• Appeals to authority range from religious ("The Bible tells me so") to legal ("It's the
law!") to every parent's final resort --"because I said so!"
• This element of coercion makes the appeal to authority more prone to a charge of
being manipulative.
• Altruism -- this appeals to the human impulse to help others --it presents the
argument's claims as good for mankind or some group that is suffering and
therefore worth doing even at a cost to the audience.
• Most charitable appeals fit here.
• Patriotism -- this could be called a specific kind of Altruism. It asks the
audience to accept the argument's conclusions because "it's good for the
country."
• Often there is self-sacrifice involved, just as with the appeal to Altruism.
• Self Interest -- this appeal is more or less the opposite of Altruism: It
tries to show the audience that the argument’s claims are beneficial to
the audience personally.
• "It's good for you!", whether that benefit is financial, medical or emotional.
• There are 2 types of self-interest appeals:
• the appeal to enlightened self-interest basically links it explicitly to
Altruism by saying, "what's good for the others is also good for you."
• The appeal to what we may call selfishness says, "Look out for number 1
and who cares about anybody else?"
• One particularly nasty form of the appeal to selfishness is outright bribery.
This covers everything from the relatively innocuous advertising ploys which
offer "free" this or that "if you act now!" to much more serious claims such as
those made by revolutionaries to their followers -- "overthrow the government
and you can have all its money!"
• Obviously, enlightened self-interest is usually more ethical than selfishness.
• Prejudice -- This is the "lowest of the low". It appeals to what
is worst in human nature and almost always persuades people
to actions which harm others.
• There is no vestige of reason in this appeal -- just the "knee-jerk reaction"
to "buzz-words" and stereotypes.
• Appeals to superstition, which are often presented as appeals to
Common Sense, are really another kind of appeal to prejudice, and
equally indefensible.