Appeal to Emotion: Pity

George Wrisley

You are my daughter. An aunt who has always taken a special interest in your well-being - has treated you with kindness, remembered your special occasions, helped with your educational expenses, and so on - has fallen on hard times and is in ill health and lonely and depressed.

Douglas Walton, Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation

Emotions have long been seen as suspect because of their power to overwhelm us. This chapter deals with fallacies that appeal to pity; also see the chapter that considers fallacies that appeal to force or fear (Chapter 13).

Sometimes evoking pity can be a legitimate part of arguing, particularly if emotion is part of what is at issue. However, often appeals to pity 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 appeal to pity 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.

The basic form looks like this:

Proponent: Gives reasons x, y, and z, one or more of which are intended to evoke pity.

Proponent: Concludes C should or should not happen.

The two basic issues relevant to considering whether an appeal to pity 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?

Let’s look at two examples to illustrate the meaning and use of these questions.

Example 1

A student who missed practically every class and did nothing outside class to master the material told me that if he failed the course he would probably be drafted into the army. (Walton 1992, 262)

What exactly is the conclusion of the student’s argument? It appears to be something like, “You [the professor] should give me a passing grade.” What is the reason given? That the student will be drafted if this doesn’t happen. But does the latter support the conclusion? Let’s begin by noting that the reason the student gives is not what we might call logically relevant to the conclusion. That is, ordinary practice is to assign students grades based on their academic performance in the course. Thus, what a student should get is determined by his performance, not factors outside that performance. Thus, whatever results from the earned grade is not relevant to determining what the grade should be. The conclusion “You should give me a passing grade” is false as it relates to the student’s performance.

However, as it relates to the reason given by the student, namely, his being drafted if he fails, it may be true, not as it relates to his performance but as it relates to other considerations. For example, say the student knows that the professor is anti-war and against the draft, thinking it is immoral for anyone to be subjected to it. Given such commitments, the student may indeed give the professor reason to give him a passing grade. In this sense, the student is equivocating on the sense of “You should give me a passing grade.” On one reading of it, the “should” relates to what is deserved in rela­tion to performance, and on the other, what needs to happen based on moral commitments. What makes this example fallacious is that the professor is talking about the grade from the standpoint of logic, but the student shifts from that standpoint, since it is a dead end for him in regard to getting a better grade, to the moral standpoint that war is bad and he shouldn’t be subjected to it.

Further, we might ask whether the student really intends the moral argument. He may not think at all of appealing to the professor’s anti-war sentiments (after all, he might not have any or the student may not be aware of them); instead, he may just fear death and want the professor to feel bad for him, pity him, and not want to be responsible for sending him to his death. If the latter is what is going on, then we can see even more clearly the problematic nature of such an appeal to pity. For even though assigning degrees of culpability is tricky, it would presumably strike many as perverse to claim that the professor’s giving the student the grade he has earned, which results in the student’s being drafted and, say, killed, caused the student to die.

Example 2

Your honor, before you sentence my client for bank robbery, I ask you to consider his situation. He is an orphan and has been in and out of facili­ties and homes his whole life, never learning how to feel at home or at peace.

What is the conclusion of this argument? Presumably, something like, “You [the judge] should, minimally, commute any sentence given for the bank robbery.” This is much different than the conclusion, “You [the judge] should find my client innocent.” We’ll return to this difference in a moment, but consider the claim that the judge should commute the sentence. What is the reason given? That the defendant was an orphan who experienced great instability and (presumably) a concomitant lack of direction, and so on. Does this support the conclusion that the sentence should be commuted? As with our first example, the reason the lawyer gives is not what we might call logically relevant to the conclusion.

However, things are more complicated than that. One issue that is important in this case is the purpose of sentencing a criminal. That is, is any punish­ment supposed to be for the purposes of rehabilitation, retribution, or what? If the judge were to view punishment’s main purpose as rehabilitation, then the kind of punishment handed down might well take into account the pitiable conditions of the defendant’s childhood. Thus, it’s possible that the mentioning of the defendant’s past is meant not to distract from the real issue by evoking pity but rather to facilitate the judge’s carrying out a sensible sentencing.

Consider a different conclusion, however. Instead of concluding that the judge should commute the sentence, let’s say the conclusion is that the judge should find the defendant innocent. If this is the conclusion of the defense lawyer, then we can see even more clearly the problematic nature of the case. That is, it is quite clear that it does not follow from the defendant’s history that he should be found innocent of bank robbery, even if the judge was interested in rehabilitation and not retribution. If that were the import of the defense lawyer’s argument, then it is clear that he is attempting to make the judge feel bad for the defendant, perhaps, making him think he’s been punished enough already.

I leave you with one more appeal to pity, from Damer (2009):

I think that we ought to give the Teacher of the Year award to Professor Raley. Ever since his wife died last year, he just hasn’t been the same. I think that this award would really lift his spirits. He always seems so sad. I think this year has been hard for him. And he’s not really that bad a teacher. (116)

References

Damer, Edward. 2009. Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy- Free Arguments, 6th edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage Learning.

Walton, Douglas. 1992. Fundamentals of Critical Argumentation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.