Appeal to Emotion: Force or Fear
George Wrisley
If workers of this company do not agree to a 25% cut in salary, then the company may have to shut its doors. Therefore, the workers of this company must agree to a 25% cut in salary.
Stan Baronett, Logic
Emotions have long been seen as suspect because of their power to overwhelm us. Plato, for example, held that reason must dominate the spirited (emotional) part of the soul. And today we view crimes of passion as deserving of less punishment than premeditated acts of violence. In the context of dialogue and argument, emotion also plays an important and powerful role. Fear can be debilitating, but it can also spur someone to do things he ordinarily wouldn’t, or couldn’t, do. In moments of pity and compassion, we often let our guard down and open to the needs of others. It is because of the wide variety of their effects and because of their centrality to our lives that emotions are so important to consider carefully.
Fear of negative consequences is a great motivator. Because it is such a strong tactic, appeals to force or fear can be quite powerful in persuading others to act. An argument that appeals to force or fear attempts to make the audience feel fear at the threat or possibility of harm in order to get them to accept a conclusion. The threat or evoking of fear can be direct or indirect, physical or psychological.
This chapter deals with fallacies that appeal to force or fear; also see the chapter that considers fallacies that appeal to pity (Chapter 14).
Sometimes evoking fear in, or threatening, another can be a legitimate part of arguing, particularly if emotion is part of what is at issue. However, often appeals to fear or force are irrelevant to the point at issue and are fallacious attempts to convince an audience to accept one’s argument/position. Thus, a central problem in regard to appeals to force or fear arguments is figuring out when such appeals are legitimate and when they’re fallacious.
In order to address this, we’ll employ several critical questions (see Walton 1992 and 2006).The basic form of the fallacy looks like this:
Proponent: Gives reasons x, y, and z, one or more of which are intended to instill fear if some action, C, does or does not happen.
Proponent: Concludes C should or should not happen.
The two basic issues relevant to considering whether an appeal to force or fear is fallacious are:
(1) What exactly is the conclusion?
(2) What is the understood point of the dialogue? In regard to that point, is the proponent equivocating in the conclusion she has drawn? That is, is one party of the argument operating with a sense of the conclusion appropriate to one purpose, but the proponent illicitly shifts from one sense to a sense appropriate to a different purpose? (See Walton 1992 and 2006.)
Let’s look at several examples to illustrate the meaning and use of these questions.
Example 1
In regard to his support of a particular bill, a lobbyist reminds a representative that he (the lobbyist) can influence so many thousands of voters in the representative’s constituency, or so many potential contributors to campaign funds. (Walton 1992, 144)
Copi comments on this example, writing, “Logically [the lobbyist’s] considerations have nothing to do with the merit of the legislation that the lobbyist is attempting to influence. But they may be, unfortunately, very persuasive” (see Walton 1992, 144-145). Copi rightly points out the issue of relevance. Whether the bill is any good, whether it ought to be adopted, is surely a matter of the bill’s quality. Thus, if we take the conclusion of the argument to be, “You should adopt this bill” in the sense of, “it is worthy legislation,” then clearly the influence of the lobbyist is irrelevant and the argument fallacious. One context of considering whether a bill should be adopted focuses on the bill’s worth. If this is the context in which the discussion is occurring, then when the lobbyist implies that bad things will happen if the representative does not support the bill, he is illicitly shifting from the sense of “should” that pertains to that context to the context of a “should” that pertains to the representative keeping his position.
As Walton writes:Whether a fallacy has been committed depends on what the representative and the lobbyist are trying to do. If they are discussing the merits of the legislation, then offers or threats to influence voters or funding are beside the point and make no contribution to the discussion. In that case the lobbyist’s “reminder” could be dismissed as a fallacious move on the grounds of its irrelevance to the issue of the discussion. (Walton 1992, 144-145)
However, as Walton further emphasizes, it’s possible that the conversation is not in the context of discussing the worth of the bill but rather is in the context of negotiating more generally whether the representative is going to support it. In such a context, the lobbyist’s purpose is to persuade the representative that it is in his best interest to support the bill; the issue isn’t the quality of the content of the bill. In such a context, we could read the lobbyist’s conclusion, “You should support the bill” in the sense of, “if you know what’s good for you.” On this reading, there is no illicit shift, no equivocation on the meaning of “should.” And, thus, the argument is not fallacious.
Example 2
A graduate school student supervisor demands sexual favors from a graduate student over whom he has control in return for continuation in a PhD program (Damer 2009, 107).
Such a straightforward demand may not seem like an argument. However, we can reconstruct the situation as an implicit argument susceptible to our questions regarding whether it is a legitimate or fallacious use of fear/threat. The “conclusion” of the argument is presumably something like, “You should have sex with me” or “We should have sex.” We have to ask, then, what is the point of the dialogue? If the point of the dialogue was something like the playful planning of a sexual encounter between people in a reciprocal relationship of attraction and affection in which there have been previous sexual encounters, then we don’t have good reason to think of the “argument” as fallacious.
However, given the language used to describe the situation, for example, the supervisor is said to “demand” sexual favors, and given that it is occurring in the context of power inequality, the “should” does not mean something like “as we’re mutually attracted to each other and amorous”; rather, the supervisor has “shifted” from that meaning to “as you surely want to continue in the program.” As such, and given the mores/ethics surrounding appropriate exchanges regarding sex, that is, sex should not be coerced, the reasons given are irrelevant to the context of the discussion of whether to have sex. Thus, the supervisor has argued fallaciously in his appeal to the student’s fear of losing her position in the program.References
Damer, Edward. 2009. Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments, 6th edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.
Walton, Douglas. 1992. The Place of Emotion in Argument. State College, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Walton, Douglas. 2006. Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.