Appeal to Vanity

Apple polishing is an appeal to vanity. It is essentially a negative type of an appeal. In these types of cases, it usually occurs when a reaction or decision is made because of another person’s actions, which usually involves some type of positive aspect towards the person making the decision. In essence, it is basically known as brown nosing, or kissing someone’s behind in order to get the praise or feedback that you want or desire. This happens all of the time in the working world. Many may have experience a situation similar to the one that I am going to describe;

“Eddie is a coworker of mine. He is lazy, sloppy, and always late. But he is always complimenting the manager, pointing the blame at others, and making himself stand out as a good worker. As a result, he received the largest Christmas bonus and will most likely receive a promotion.”

Eddie’s actions have caused the manager to move him up the ladder, because of appeals to vanity.

#6: Appeal to Spite

An appeal to spite is usually used to reject what someone believes has been seen in all the past elections with advertisements that rally against an opposing party. For example, Jerry Brown’s campaign used a brilliant advertisement on television that made the current governor and the Republican candidate, Meg Whitman, seem very unappealing. Jerry Brown’s campaign used an advertisement that contained many audio and visual clips of both Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Meg Whitman separately, but each audio segment dictated phrases and sentences that were uttered by both individuals during both of their campaigns. They were 100% matched, word for word. The advertisement then questioned the public if this is what they desired. This was a brilliant smear move towards the Republican campaign – it demonstrated their lack of ability to fix California’s issues, and in essence, broken promises. This argument is an excellent argument, with a very convincing message. Due to the election results, I would say the advertisement did the job it was meant to do.

Appeal to Emotion

An appeal to emotion occurs when a premise dictates that because you feel a certain way, you should believe or do something as a result of that feeling. There are a few different types of appeals to emotion in arguments. These include appealing to pity, appealing to fear, and appealing to spite. Today, appealing to fear has struck me. A friend posted about how he was able to reach speeds of 90 mph on Highway 17. Someone instantly replied and commented about how that could result in his funeral. Car accidents and death are both very serious issues, so it definitely struck my attention. This demonstrates an appeal to fear, because the consequence for the action of speeding could result in an accident, and Highway 17 is notorious for these incidents. Not only that, the road is a dangerous when excessive speeds are reached. This type of driving will only leave more of a chance for possible deaths in the event of an accident.

General Claims

I think it's interesting how there are so many ways we can make general claims and it's hard to set formulas for contradictories. I also find it interesting how when people try to win in an argument that sometimes they contradict themselves. For example, an acquaintance said "I have free movie tickets since one of my high school friend works at the theater" to a friend of mine. She didn’t know that this friend was close to me. The weird thing about it is that she only knew I started working there because she recently went to see a movie at the theater I work at. Just because we’ve met a couple of times, it doesn’t mean she’ll get anything for free from me. I believe she can use some tips on general claims. When we say something to someone, we should make sure that it is the truth (because lies usually contradict anyway...).

Useful Assignments

Both course assignments are very helpful projects that will aid in our individual futures. By discussing the validity, strengths, and weaknesses of claims, we are introduced to new tools that will help us to evaluate statements that we may come across in our lives. Additionally, both assignments have actually helped with communication skills. With technology playing such a large role in communication for current times, many of us have elected to take an online class for various reasons… But sitting behind a computer screen and communicating to another individual sometimes creates a communication block; there is no physical interaction. By assigning group projects for an online class, it forces the students to communicate effectively and efficiently, for many of us have busy schedules that may be tough to accommodate for one another. This can be carried into future careers, where many large corporations contain many locations in different parts of the world.

General Claims and Their Contradictories

General claims are a statement or statements that entail a discussion in a general way about a part of or all of an entire group of subjects. But these types of claims are not always true. For example, if one were to say, “I love Red Bull. Red Bull gives me energy and keeps me awake. Therefore, I am a healthy person.” This is quite a stretch. Just because Red Bull does what is stated, and an individual drinks Red Bull, does not automatically mean the person is in good health. There is not enough evidence to support such a claim.

Precise generalities are often seen with stereotypes. This occurs when a general statement is made that lists a quantity, but is not necessarily true. Let’s take a common stereotype: “70% of Asians are bad drivers. I am Asian. Therefore, I am a bad driver.” Regardless of whether or not the statistic is true, this is a general claim. Is it possible that I do not fall into the 30% of Asian drivers that may be deemed a good driver? This is not a strong claim.

Refuting Arguments with Ridicule

Ridicule is often used to refute bad arguments. Generally, ridiculing a bad argument would most likely be offensive, and may even be considered humorous, depending on the sense of humor of the individual of the opponent or the target audience. Ridiculing a bad argument occurs quite frequently in the work place. For example, while working in the Information Technology department and dealing with a virus infected computer, Person A might claim that they have a fix for the virus by completely wiping out the system and starting over. Person B would then refute and discredit Person A by pointing out that formatting the computer would result in the user having the possibility of losing important data. Person A might then retort by saying, “well if I start the entire PC image over again, then the virus would be guaranteed to be cleaned.” While the statement is true, Person A is trying to ridicule Person B by saying that the problem will be resolved – regardless of whether or not the customer is happy or content with the possibility of data loss. Instead of going this route, Person A should find another work around to clean the system of any infected software.