For the first discussion of the week, we're focusing on Chapter 10 which involves the concept of "appealing to emotion". The main purpose of using any of the forms of "appeal to emotion" is to try to take advantage of the emotional weaknesses of others in order to make an argument even more convincing. It may appear to make an argument stronger, but in reality appealing to emotion is a shady trick that results in a very weak/bad argument. Political "attack" ads that we've been seeing for the past few months (the whole Meg Whitman vs. Jerry Brown ads are quite hilarious) are great examples of trying to appeal to voters emotions.
I'm going to use the general "appeal to emotion" aspect because of all the political ads I had to watch during the post-season recently (GIANTS!). As the book says, "An appeal to emotion in an argument is just a premise that says, roughly, you should believe or do something because you feel a certain way" (pg.191). Besides attack ads that are more directed towards the "appeal to fear" aspect, a lot of the proposition ads/certain candidates focused on the general premise of "Are you mad at so-and-so running our city/state?" or "Don't you feel like you're being taken advantage of by X policy/tax/propositon? If so, vote yes/no on ____". They all focus on the same meaning that if you feel a certain way about a certain political issue, then go out and vote.
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