Are Appeals to the Emotions Necessarily Fallacious?

Lawrence M. Hinman

Introduction

It is still something of a dogma in informal logic books that appeals to the emotions are fallacies of relevance. At least two types of arguments seem to underlie this conviction. First, the appeal to emotions, even though it may be psychologically persuasive, is seen as logically irrelevant to the conclusion of an argument and therefore unable to support the truth of that conclusion. In the stronger version of this claim, all appeals to emotions are seen as irrelevant and therefore fallacious.1 In its weaker and more common variant, this claim states that such an appeal is fallacious if the appeal is logically irrelevant to the conclusion.2 Yet often this weaker claim is implicitly stronger because little or no mention is made of the situation in which an appeal to the emotions could be logically relevant to the conclusion of an argument.3 Thus the reader is often left by default with a picture of all appeals to the emotions as being fallacious. Such a view is, moreover, given further support in logic texts when the traditional distinction between the informative and expressive uses of language is introduced and propositions are seen as being asserted only when language is used informatively.4 The emotive dimension of language is treated as expressive and any disagreements on this level are seen as disagreements in attitude rather than belief. The net effect of this is to exclude emotions from the proper domain of argumentation.

Second, underlying this belief in the fallacious character of appeals to the emotions is, I suspect, a deep distrust of the emotions and, perhaps as a result of that distrust, a model of argumentation which has no room for emotions in its notion of what counts as a reason. In the following remarks, I intend to challenge this view. I shall begin with an analysis of a non-fallacious appeal to the emotion of pity or compassion and then look briefly at an appeal to fear. This paves the way for the second part of the paper, which outlines the general structure of sound appeals to the emotions and concentrates in particular on the question of justifying the premise of an argument which contains the emotive appeal. In the concluding section, I shall offer some observations on the role of emotions in reasoning, placing special emphasis on the way in which we must reshape our understanding of the process of deliberation if we are to accord emotions their proper place in the activity of reasoning. Throughout this analysis I shall restrict myself to appeals to the emotions which are directed toward convincing us to follow a particular course of action. This analysis can, however, be extended to other appeals to the emotions which are not oriented toward specific actions but only toward a change of attitude.

I

If an argument is fallacious, there are only two ways in which this can occur. On the one hand, it may be formally invalid because it instantiates an invalid argument form. On the other hand, the argument, though perhaps valid, may contain a false-or otherwise inadmissible-premise. In the cases we are dealing with here, the relevant objectionable premise would contain an appeal to the emotions. Presumably appeals to the emotions, since they are classified as fallacies of relevance, will be formally invalid, for the premise which contains the emotional appeal should be logically irrelevant to the conclusion which is drawn. Yet since most arguments in everyday language are formally invalid as they stand and must be reconstructed in such a way that missing premises are supplied, classifying appeals to the emotions as fallacies of relevance may not be sufficient, since the reconstructed versions of such arguments may supply an implicit premise about emotional appeals which makes the appeal a formally valid one. Thus, if we are willing to give appeals to the emotions the same benefit of the doubt which we give other arguments in reconstructing them, we must realize that their fallacious character may not always be a matter of logical invalidity. Let's see how this works out in practice by looking at some examples.

Consider, as a first example, advertisements for CARE and other relief organizations which often show a starving child with a suppliant look, stomach distended, arms and legs like matchsticks. Presumably the feeling we are supposed to experience here is one of compassion and the action we are to take is one of contributing to the relief agency in question. (Introductory logic books might well classify this as an appeal to pity, but I think in this case the less tendentious classification of an appeal to compassion is appropriate.) Presuming that the import of the picture is to convince the person seeing the ad that he should feel compassion for the suffering of these children, and assuming that feeling compassion involves wanting to alleviate the suffering which arouses our compassion, we can offer at least one plausible reconstruction of the argument implicit in this advertisement which is valid:

P1 If you feel compassion for the suffering of these children, then you should do what you can to help to alleviate that suffering;

P2 If you want to do what you can to alleviate the suffering of these children, you should contribute to CARE;

P3 You feel compassion for the suffering of these children;

C You should contribute to CARE.

This is a valid argument form with an appeal to the emotion of compassion as an integral part of the argument. Thus we can, it seems, have valid arguments which contain an appeal to the emotions. If it is a fallacy, its fallacious character must be sought elsewhere than in the realm of formal invalidity, namely, in the premises of the argument.

How, then, are we to assess the premises of the argument? There are certainly some problems with the second premise, for there are other ways to alleviate the suffering of children than contributing to CARE; yet we could certainly imagine that this premise could be true in a world in which CARE was the only relief organization and other means of action were ineffective. I will, however, ignore these kinds of difficulties, since they do not bear directly upon our main concern, the emotive dimension of this argument. The first premise makes, I think, a conceptual point about the meaning of compassion. As Lawrence Blum has pointed out, compassion characteristically "requires the disposition to perform beneficent actions, and to perform them because the agent has had a certain sort of imaginative reconstruction of someone's condition and has had concern for his good."5 Thus, "when it is possible for her to relieve another person's suffering without undue demands on her time, energy, and priorities, the compassionate person is disposed to attempt to help."6 The first premise, in other words, is a relatively uncontroversial claim about what it means to feel compassion. If there is a fallacy, it must have its source in the third premise. Let's look at it more closely.

There are two ways in which something might be wrong with this premise: it may be an inadequate translation of the intended meaning of the argument or it may simply not be true. Let's deal with the question of translation first. Admittedly, there is quite a bit of latitude in formulating such a premise, since we are beginning with a photograph rather than a sentence. However, the basic structure here seems to be rather clear: the ad seeks to make us feel compassion for the suffering of these children by showing us a picture of the suffering they are enduring, and the having of this feeling serves as partial support for the conclusion which is drawn. I think there are only two plausible approaches to translating this premise: either the translation given above or one such as, "You should (or ought to) feel compassion for the suffering of these children." If the latter alternative is chosen, appropriate modifications must be made elsewhere in the argument to obtain a valid argument form. Both approaches are, I think, reasonable and defensible formulations of the implicit meaning of the advertisement and both can yield valid arguments. The only remaining question is whether the premise, under either formulation, is true.

There is a certain trivial sense in which the first formulation of this premise can be said to be true: when "you" refers to a person who, in fact, does happen to feel compassion for the suffering of such children, then it is true that that person does feel such compassion. Yet this is a trivial sense, since it avoids the more fundamental question which is obvious in the second formulation of the premise: is one justified in feeling such compassion? There are at least three ways in which this feeling might be shown to be unjustified and the premise thus false. First, just as Plato suggested in the Philebus that there may be false pleasures insofar as an anticipatory pleasure may be based on a false belief,7 so too we could suggest an analogous case in regard to compassion. False compassion would be compassion based on false or misleading beliefs about the object of compassion. In this case, if it is believed on the basis of the photograph that the children are starving, and if, in fact, the children in question are well-nourished and the photograph was actually taken during an earlier famine which had subsequently been eradicated, then we might well want to say that this is a case of false compassion, i.e., a feeling of genuine compassion based on a false belief about its object. Second, the premise may be unjustified because it presents a misleadingly incomplete picture of the situation in question. If, for example, this were a picture of an undernourished child in an otherwise very well nourished population, the unrepresentative character of the sample depicted would be misleading. One could imagine, to change the example, showing a picture of someone being executed and evoking feelings of compassion toward the person being killed. Yet the picture might be seriously incomplete, for it might have omitted any reference to the gruesome crimes which the individual had committed-crimes which, if we had seen them, would have awakened feelings of revulsion in us which might outweigh the feeling of compassion in this instance.

There is a third and final way in which such a premise might turn out to be unjustified: the feeling may not be appropriate to, or proportionate to, its object. This is certainly a difficult criterion to work out in practice, but few would dispute the fact that there is some relationship of appropriateness or proportionality between an emotion and its object. A feeling of compassion, for example, is generally more justified when directed toward the suffering of human beings than when it is directed toward the suffering of flies. This depends ultimately on some sort of normative conception of human nature which can hardly be developed and defended in this paper,8 so we must confine ourselves here simply to pointing out the role that such a conception of human nature plays in the justification of emotion. I will, however, return to the question of justifying the emotions below. We can certainly imagine that the feeling of compassion awakened in the CARE advertisement could meet these three standards of justification: it might be based on a true and representative picture of suffering children and call forth an appropriately human response to the suffering depicted.

Consider, as a second and much shorter example, a typical appeal to fear that appeared in a California anti-crime campaign advertising a new law. The law declared that offenders convicted of using a gun in the commission of a crime would have to be sentenced to a prison term. All the ads contained the phrase, "Use a gun, go to prison," accompanied by the sight and sound of a prison door slamming shut. The structure of the implied argument is roughly as follows:

P1 Going to prison is something to be feared.

P2 If you fear something, you should not do things which will bring that thing about.

P3 If you use a gun in the commission of a crime, you will bring it about that you will go to prison.

C You should not use a gun in the commission of a crime.

This argument can, I think, be reformulated as a valid argument. There are, however, serious doubts about the truth of the premises, especially the third premise. Committing the crime is not a sufficient condition for going to prison: one must be arrested and unable to plea-bargain. The second premise makes a conceptual point about the meaning of fear, and one could argue that it is roughly correct.9 The first premise is at least true for most people and subject to the same kind of justification that we encountered in the case of compassion.

The preceding examples at least show the possibility of sound arguments containing appeals to the emotions. Let us now consider the general structure of these arguments.

II

The two examples discussed above offer a key to the general structure of sound appeals to the emotions. They must have three types of premises. First, there must be at least one premise which claims that you should have a particular feeling or actually tries to awaken that emotion in the audience. Second, there must be at least one conceptual premise which elucidates the relationship between experiencing the emotion in question and doing the kind of action mentioned in the conclusion. Finally, one needs at least one empirical premise to establish the link between the general type of action motivated by the emotion and the specific course of action recommended in the conclusion. Thus we get the following argument pattern:

P1 Appeal to a specific emotion;

P2 Conceptual premise linking having the emotion to particular types of actions;

P3 Empirical premise linking the type of action given in P2 with a specific course of action;

C Conclusion exhorting someone to a specific course of action given in P3.

Appeals to the emotions which follow this pattern can be valid arguments. The question remains whether they can be sound or not, and the answer to this depends primarily on whether the first premise can be justified. (I assume that the remaining two premises offer no difficulties in principle, even if, in fact, we have not always worked out the logic of particular emotions fully.)

Two factors come into play in determining whether a particular appeal to an emotion is justified or not.10 First, if having a particular emotion presupposes having specific beliefs about the world, then we can assess the emotion in question by considering the justification for the beliefs it presupposes. If, for example, I am angry at someone because I believe that person stole a book of mine, and if in fact the book was stolen by someone else, then my anger is unjustified. If I feel elated because I have just won a million dollars in a contest, and if it turns out that the notification I received was a hoax, then my elation would be unjustified. Moreover, these beliefs not only have to be true, but I must be justified in taking them to be true. If I am angry at someone for having taken my book, and if there is no evidence available to me that the person was the thief, and if, however, the person did in fact take the book, then my anger is still unjustified. Although it presupposes a belief which happens to be true, I am not justified in having that belief since I have no evidence in support of it. Thus, a necessary condition of an emotion's being justified is that it presuppose true beliefs for which I have adequate evidence.

Presupposing true, justified beliefs is not, however, sufficient to insure the justification of an emotion. The emotion must also in some sense be appropriate to the situation.11 The criterion of appropriateness is certainly a vague one, but this does not rob it of merit. It is relatively easy to imagine rather clearcut cases of appropriate and inappropriate emotional responses. If, for example, someone kills my parents whom I profess to love and I react with indifference or perhaps even glee, it is difficult to imagine anyone thinking that this is an appropriate emotional response. Indeed, it might well be taken as prima facie evidence of a moral failing, of a lack of the minimal moral sensitivity necessary to moral agency. (It is true that we could imagine some very perverted person, such as a mass murderer, thinking that this was an appropriate emotional response, but I will deal with that case below.) If, on the other hand, I were to respond to such an occurrence with grief and anger, presumably almost everyone would agree that that was appropriate. Can we, however, get beyond simply appealing to our intuitions in these matters?

I think so. Closer examination reveals that two different kinds of factors seem to come into play when we attempt to justify the appropriateness of our emotions. First, appropriateness will in part be determined through reference to the concept of the particular emotion in question. If, for example, I see a well-dressed stranger walking down the street and say to a friend that I am really proud of the way that stranger dresses, one would want to call such an emotion inappropriate, since I had no control over, or responsibility for, the way the stranger was dressed. It is part of the concept of pride that I can only take pride in things that in some (perhaps quite extended) sense are mine.12 In a similar way, if I am angry at the sky for raining on a day for which I had planned a picnic, we would have to say that such anger was inappropriate, since the sky itself did not do anything to me. The concept of anger is such that our anger is directed toward some kind of agent.13 If I stub my toe on a chair at home, I can't appropriately get angry at the chair itself, although I may appropriately get mad at someone who moved the chair, rearranged other furniture in the room in such a way that I would be more likely to bump into the chair, etc. If, finally, I were to feel jealous that a famous movie star whom I had never met was having an affair with someone, that jealousy would be inappropriate, since I have no claims on the movie star which would entitle me to feel jealous.14 Thus appropriateness depends in part on the concept of the particular emotion in question. One way in which an emotion may be inappropriate is that it may violate the conceptual conditions presupposed by calling it that emotion at all.

The other way in which emotions may be inappropriate depends upon a conception of human nature that is at least somewhat normative in character. We have, in other words, an understanding of what it means to respond in a human way in a given type of situation. If, for example, someone takes delight in the moral degradation of another human being, even if that other person is an enemy, I think we would want to say that that is an inappropriate response. To remain unmoved in the face of what would usually be recognized as awe-inspiring goodness (e.g., the work of Mother Theresa in India) would again be to respond in a less than fully human way; to feel disgust or contempt in that same situation would presumably be an inhuman response. It is certainly possible that there are some human beings who as a matter of empirical fact actually experience these kinds of emotions, but it is precisely these cases that we would want to classify as pathological in some sense. Yet such a label is somewhat misleading, since in everyday usage it would usually be justified only in cases where either the emotions are morally objectionable or those emotional reactions could be taken as signs of mental illness. Yet it seems that there are other cases of emotional inappropriateness which do not fall under these descriptions. The lack of an emotional response to beauty, or perhaps even a feeling of disgust in the face of beauty, would count as an inappropriate emotional response which is neither morally objectionable nor indicative of mental illness, yet there is something deeply inappropriate about such an response. Clearly it is beyond the scope of this paper to develop and defend the normative conception of human nature which this aspect of appropriateness presupposes, and obviously there will be strong disagreement in some cases over precisely where to draw the line between human and inhuman emotional responses to a situation, but the central point nevertheless remains clear: the appropriateness of an emotion is determined in part by a normative conception of human nature, which specifies what it means to react in a human way to given types of situations.

Thus appeals to the emotions can at least in some cases be sound arguments. They may be in valid arguments, and the emotional appeal itself may be shown to be justified. Needless to say, especially in a society permeated by advertising which attempts to sell products through the manipulation of emotions, appeals to the emotions may often be fallacious. The way is now open in principle for recognizing that this need not be the case, that the fault does not lie with the emotions themselves but with the use to which we put them. It remains now to examine briefly the broader philosophical significance of our traditional exclusion of the emotions from the domain of reasoning and to point to some of the consequences of accepting the legitimate role of emotions in reasoning.

III

We have traditionally been distrustful of the emotions, I suspect, primarily because we view them as things which overcome us from outside, as alien forces within our own psychological lives. Emotions are in this sense passions, things which we suffer or endure.15 Lurking behind this attitude is the belief that one's true self is composed primarily of one's thoughts (and perhaps volitions); one's emotions are in this view fundamentally outside the self. Precisely because the emotions are seen as other than self and thinking is taken as constitutive of the self, emotions come to be seen as a threat to our freedom.16 We can make sense out of someone's saying that he had succumbed to his emotions, but it would be very odd indeed if a person were to say that he had succumbed to his thoughts. The reason is clear: one can only succumb to something which is outside the self, and emotions, but not thoughts, are usually seen as occupying this position. In a similar way, we can imagine someone saying that a speaker is playing on his audience's emotions, yet we would hardly expect to hear that the speaker had been playing on their thoughts. Again, the reason seems to be that the emotions are seen as forces which lie outside the boundaries, which are other than the self and which can thus be seen as a threat to the self in a way in which one's own thoughts can never be. Emotions thus come to be viewed as a threat to our freedom and, insofar as thinking is the core of our freedom, emotions appear as antithetical to thinking.

What is needed, if the role of emotions in argumentation is to be properly appreciated, is two-fold. First, we must provide an account of the way in which emotions can serve as reasons which may support a conclusion. This, I hope, has been accomplished in the preceding sections of this paper. Second, we must provide a broader account of thinking, or, perhaps more properly, of deliberation, which shows the way in which both emotions and thoughts may play important roles in the process of coming to make up one's mind. (It would be more accurate, but stylistically less acceptable, to say that we not only make up our minds, but also our emotions in such a process.) On some occasions, we may come to a conclusion on the level of thinking, but not be fully committed to it because our emotions are lagging behind; conversely, there are occasions on which we have come to a conclusion on the emotional level but our cognitive processes have not yet caught up with our feelings. The full process of deliberation involves coming to a conclusion which involves our emotions as well as our thoughts.

Endnotes

1 This is evident in, for example, S. Morris Engel's excellent treatment of both the appeal to the masses and the appeal to pity. See his With Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies, Second Edition (New York: St. Martin's Press, l982), pp. 173-83. Engel clearly seems to presuppose that an appeal to an emotion is antithetical to an appeal to a reason.

2 See, for example, Irving M. Copi's claim about the appeal to pity: "The argumentum ad misericordiam is the fallacy committed when pity is appealed to for the sake of getting a conclusion accepted, where the conclusion is concerned with a question of fact rather than a matter of sentiment," and the appeal to the masses as "the attempt to win popular assent to a conclusion by arousing the emotions and enthusiasms of the multitude, rather than by appeal to the relevant facts." Introduction to Logic, Sixth Edition (New York: Macmillan, 1982), pp. 102, 104. In his treatment of the appeal to pity, Patrick Hurley takes a more standard approach, maintaining that "The fallacy of appeal to pity occurs whenever an arguer poses a conclusion and then attempts to evoke pity from the reader or listener in an effort to get him or her to accept the conclusion." A Concise Introduction to Logic, Fifth Edition (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1994), p. 118. This seems to imply that all appeals to pity are always fallacious.

3 In this respect, Copi's treatment of the appeal to pity is better than most, for he does quote Hamblin's remark (in his book Fallacies) that in lawsuits and political speeches a "proposition is presented primarily as a guide to action and, where action is concerned, it is not so clear that pity and other emotions are irrelevant." Ibid., p. 103. However, he then proceeds to ignore this suggestion.

4 Thus, after drawing this distinction in the standard manner, Copi maintains that, "if we are concerned to investigate the literal truth or falsity of a view and to discover its logical implications, our task will be facilitated if we translate any highly emotive formulation concerning it into as nearly neutral a description as possible." Ibid., p. 96. Emotive language is thus effectively eliminated from arguments.

5 Lawrence Blum, "Compassion," Explaining Emotions, edited by Amélie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), p. 513.

6 Ibid.

7 Philebus 35c-41b. On the interpretation of this passage, see especially the exchange between Gosling and Kenney in volumes 4, 5, and 6 (1959-61) in Phronesis; on the broader issue of false pleasures, see the symposium in American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. I, No. 2 (1964), pp. 81-100, with a contribution by Penelhum and comments by Kennick and Isenberg.

8 For some recent discussions of the emotions which resort to something like a normative conception of human nature, see Mary Midgley, "The Objection to Systematic Humbug," Philosophy, Vol. 53 (April, 1978), pp. 147-9, esp. p. 156 and D. W. Hamlyn, "The Phenomena of Love and Hate," Philosophy, Vol. 53 (January, 1978), pp. 5-20, esp. pp. 16-20. Hamlyn appeals to "normal expectations" to determine whether a certain emotion might be called "inhuman."

9 Since they do not affect the outcome of this discussion, I have deliberately omitted using here some recent advances in our understanding of the conceptual structure of fear. On this issue, see especially the analysis by Robert M. Gordon, "Fear," Philosophical Review, LXXXIX, 4 (October, 1980), pp. 560-78.

10 This general division has been suggested by Gabriele Taylor, "Justifying the Emotions," Mind, Vol. 84, No. 335 (July, 1975), pp.390-403, esp. pp. 392-94. On this same topic, also see Mary Warnock and A. C. Ewing, "The Justification of Emotions," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume 31 (1957), pp. 43-74, esp. pp. 62-67 for Mr. Ewing's discussion of the various grounds for condemning an emotion.

11 In addition to the comments that Taylor, op. cit., offers on the notion of appropriateness, see especially Ronald de Sousa, "The Rationality of Emotions," in Explaining Emotions, ed. Rorty, pp. 127-52.

12 This is, roughly, a Humean point about pride. On this, see especially Donald Davidson, "Hume's Cognitive Theory of Pride," in his Essays on Actions and Events (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), esp. 278-79; for some important criticisms of the Humean formal restraints imposed on pride, see Gabriele Taylor, "Pride," Explaining Emotions, ed. Rorty, pp. 385-402.

13 On the analysis of the conceptual dimensions of anger, see Taylor, "Justifying the Emotions," pp. 394-97.

14 Some, such as Russell in The Morality of Marriage, would maintain that such claims on another human being would never be justified. For an extended analysis of the conceptual requirements of jealousy, see Daniel M. Farrell, "Jealousy," Philosophical Review, Vol. LXXXIX, No. 4 (October, 1988), pp. 527-559.

15 On the changing conception of the emotions, see Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, "From Passions to Emotions and Sentiments," Philosophy, Vol. 57, No. 228 (April, 1982), pp. 159-172.

16 One of the most effective statements of this point is to be found in Fritjoh Bergmann's On Being Free (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1977), esp. pp. 15-48.