Evaluating an Argument’s Pathos

Philosophers and laypeople have long asked what role emotions should have in shaping our ideas. Is it right for arguments to appeal to emotion, or is it a cheap trick? Should we guard against feeling what an argument asks us to feel? Or should we let emotions play a role in helping us decide whether we agree or not?

In one oversimplified view, logic is a good way to decide things and listening to emotions is a bad way. We might make this assumption if we tell ourselves or others, “Stop and think. You’re getting too emotional.” According to this view, no one reasons well under the influence of emotion. Pure ideas are king, and feelings only distort them.

Of course, sometimes emotions do lead us astray. But emotions and logic can work together. Consider Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. Was it illegitimate for him to ask listeners to feel deeply moved to support racial equality? He famously proclaimed, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Should listeners have guarded themselves against feeling sympathy for those four children? If we care about things that matter and an argument is about something that matters, then we will and should have feelings about it. King intertwines his logical argument against racism with an appeal to our empathy, tenderness, and sense of justice.

In analyzing emotional appeals, remember that emotional appeals can be a useful and appropriate way to engage the audience. However, pathos can also be inappropriately applied or overused.

Evaluating Tone and Emotional Appeals 

Tone refers to the overall emotional attitude of the argument. We know intuitively what “tone of voice” means when we’re describing a conversation. If we hear a person speaking and ask ourselves the following questions, we will usually be able to describe the tone:

• What emotions are conveyed by the sound of the voice?

• What expression do we see or imagine on the speaker’s face as they make the argument?

When we read, we lack visual and auditory clues, but we still intuitively sense the writer’s attitude. Tone comes across through emotional word choice and choice of examples, but also in other ways, both subtle and overt. These include sentence structure, use of questions, emphasis, and direct declarations of feeling. All of these contribute to an overall pattern.

The writer may be shifting tone and emotional appeal in subtle or dramatic ways either to match shifts in the ideas or to create variety. For example, we think of Shakespearean drama as exalted high culture, but Shakespeare famously wrote scenes of terrible puns, sex jokes, and plenty of slapstick into his most intense tragedies to keep the audience from pelting actors with rotten tomatoes. Similarly, a writer may choose to offer some relief or distraction after an impassioned appeal through a moment of humor or a neutral statement. 

We can liken the variety in emotional appeal to the way music varies in volume and pacing. Sometimes a piece of music keeps the same volume and pace throughout, but more often the composer adds notes to the musician on when to boom or hush, hurry or draw out the notes. Sometimes the music gets faster and louder toward the end, in a crescendo of intensity. This is one traditional way of ending an argument: on what we sometimes call a “ringing note” meant to inspire and fire up readers to agree, remember, or take action.

In evaluating an argument, consider the role emotion plays in presenting and arguing for the claim and reasons. Does the author use emotional appeals or not? Should the author have used emotional appeals?  

Evaluating an Argument’s Ethos

So far, we have discussed how arguments attempt to affect our emotions and attempt to persuade with logic, but an argument’s success also depends on how well writers have gauged their readers’ values and cultural associations. Now we can back up and look at readers’ responses through a different lens: that of trust. Trust provides an underlying foundation for the success of emotional and logical appeals. If we don’t have a certain degree of trust in the writer, we will be less willing to let an argument affect us. We may not allow even a skillfully worded emotional appeal to move us, and we may not be ready to agree even with a well-supported claim.

Each of these different levels of expertise will confer a different level of authority on the topic. It is important to understand if an author is truly an expert on the content.

Evaluating Sincerity

Obviously, lying about who we are or what we believe in is not a valid way to build trust. An appeal to a shared identity that is not really shared or an appeal to a shared value that the writer does not really hold is certainly a breach of trust.

However, referring to an identity that the writer doesn’t share can be a legitimate gesture of goodwill, as long as the writer doesn’t misrepresent their own background. A white politician who interjects Spanish words into a speech to a largely Latinx audience is signaling that they want to appear friendly and empathetic to a Latinx identity. Of course, the politician’s accent may undermine this by reminding the audience of their different backgrounds. Will the audience be glad that the politician is trying? Will they be put off by a sense that the politician is presuming too much or encroaching on an identity that doesn’t belong to them? Writers will often try to signal respect and familiarity if they do refer to another group’s identity, as in “I know from talking to transgender friends that using a single-gender restroom can feel stressful and dangerous.”

Even if the attempt to gain our trust is logical and relevant, we should ask whether its importance has been exaggerated. Our decision to trust should be based on many different factors. Often appeals to trust imply that we should accept or reject a claim when more caution is called for. 

Evaluating for Fallacies

The following examples demonstrate how to evaluate for use of fallacies; for more details about fallacies, see Chapter 12.

Bandwagon Fallacy

An extremely common technique is to suggest that a claim is true because it is widely accepted. Of course, we do legitimately need to refer to other people’s opinions as guides to our own at times. An idea’s popularity may be a legitimate reason to investigate it further. It might be a reason to consider it influential and thus important to address in a discussion. But its popularity does not prove its validity. Popularity may be due to the idea’s correctness, but it may be due to many other reasons too.

Appeals to popularity encourage readers to base their decisions too much on their underlying desire to fit in, to be hip to what everybody else is doing, not to be considered crazy, such as the first time we did something wrong because all of our friends were doing it, too, and our mom or dad asked us, “If all of your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do that too?” 

Ad Hominem Fallacy

We commit this fallacy when, instead of attacking an opponent’s views, we attack the opponent. What makes this a fallacy is the disconnect between the reason and the claim. Logicians call this an ad hominem fallacy, which means “to the person.” The opponent may have bad qualities, but these qualities do not make their argument incorrect. They may give legitimate reason to trust the argument less, but they do not invalidate it.

This fallacy comes in various forms; there are a lot of different ways to attack a person while ignoring (or downplaying) their actual arguments. Abusive attacks are the most straightforward. The simplest version is simply calling your opponent names instead of debating them. Donald Trump mastered this technique. During the 2016 Republican presidential primary, he came up with catchy nicknames for his opponents, which he used just about every time he referred to them: “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz, “Little Marco” Rubio, “Low-Energy Jeb” Bush. If you pepper your descriptions of your opponent with tendentious, unflattering, politically charged language, you can get a rhetorical leg-up.

Guilt by Association

Another abusive attack is guilt by association. Here, you tarnish your opponent by associating them or his views with someone or something that your audience despises. Consider the following:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney was an advocate of a strong version of the so-called Unitary Executive interpretation of the Constitution, according to which the president’s control over the executive branch of government is quite firm and far-reaching. The effect of this is to concentrate a tremendous amount of power in the Chief Executive, such that those powers arguably eclipse those of the supposedly co-equal Legislative and Judicial branches of government. You know who else was in favor of a very strong, powerful Chief Executive? That’s right, Hitler.

The argument just compared Dick Cheney to Hitler with only the tiniest shred of evidence. That evidence is not sufficient to make a legitimate comparison: if it were, then any person who favored giving most government power to one leader could be compared to Hitler. Clearly, consolidating power was not the most significant thing Hitler did, nor, in itself, is it the reason we have such negative associations with his name. Those powerful negative associations make comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis a powerful rhetorical strategy which is often used when it isn’t justified. There is even a fake-Latin term for the tactic: Argumentum ad Nazium (cf. the real Latin phrase, ad nauseum—to the point of nausea.