Questions (Propositions) of Policy

• Persuading for a change to an existing law, plan, or policy, or for creating a new policy

• Policy suggestions need to be real and sincere and based on evidence

• Ex:

  • Asking what should be done to make a given situation better

  • Citizens handing out pamphlets on Election Day

Questions (Propositions) of Fact

• When someone tries to persuade another person if a fact is true or not or that something did not did not happen

• Convince the audience that what you are proposing is correct

• Examples:

  • The captain of the Titanic was solely responsible for the ship’s untimely sinking

  • Texting while driving is a dangerous habit

Questions (Propositions) of Value

• Use when trying to persuade the relative merits - good/bad, moral/immoral - of a position

• Focus on judging what is right or wrong or on what is good or bad

• Use of pathos (emotional appeal)

• Ex:

  • Pharmaceutical companies have the moral responsibility not to test their products on animals

  • It is not moral that poverty exists in the United States

Speaker Credibility comes from:

• Knowledge of topic

• Personal experience or connection with topic

• Personal interest in & attitude about topic

• Professionalism, vocal and physical delivery

• Personableness, sincerity, enthusiasm

• Being prepared, rehearsed and display confidence

• Verifying facts to be credible and trustworthy

• Ask for a suspended judgment: Acknowledge the audience’s beliefs or opinions (opposing viewpoint(s), but at the same time politely ask them to consider your position on the topic.

• Avoiding fallacies in reasoning.

• Adding supporting facts/stories/evidence and reasoning (Use examples, comparisons and definitions).

Logical Appeal: Inductive vs Deductive reasoning

• Inductive: Someone makes specific observations and then draws a general conclusion. When you’re using inductive reasoning, correct observations won’t necessarily lead you to a correct general conclusion.

• Examples:

  • Every quiz has been easy. Therefore, the test will be easy.

  • The teacher used PPT in the last few classes. Therefore, the teacher will use PPT tomorrow.

• Deductive: A specific conclusion follows a general theory. When you’re using deductive reasoning, your conclusion will be correct if all the statements you say are correct.

• Examples:

  • All students in this class play guitar. Sam is a student of this class. → Therefore, Sam plays guitar.

  • At the conference, all the people present are thirty or older. Maria is in the room. → Therefore, Maria is at least thirty.

Argument with Examples using Inductive or Deductive Reasoning

• Use specific EXAMPLES to support a larger claim

• Examples specific to daily lives and relatable to the audience

  • Inductive Reasoning: If Socrates is a man and all men are mortal, then Socrates must be mortal as well.

  • Deductive Reasoning: I was bit by a German Shepherd when I was young, therefore most German Shepherds must be bitter.

• BUT, avoid the hasty generalization with deductive reasoning.

Argument by Analogy and Comparisons

• Compares different ideas or examples to reach a conclusion literally or metaphorically

• Ex:

  • “That relationship is like a bad sitcom.”

  • The argument is based on the audience’s understanding of the comparison

• Concludes that if something is true for one case, it is true for another similar case

• Often used with propositions of policy

Organizing Your Persuasive Presentation

• Monroe’s Motivated Sequence Pattern

1. Attention

• Make audience aware of problem and why it matters

2. Need

• Elaborate on the need to address the topic

3. Satisfaction

• Propose a solution to the problem

4. Visualization

• Show audience what they will gain

5. Action

• Ask audience to act on your proposal

Now let’s go through the Fallacies in Reasoning

• A fallacy is basically an error in judgment or reasoning

• This results in invalid conclusions and a speaker losing credibility.

Either-or Fallacy

• Discussing an issue as if there are only two alternatives

• This fallacy ignores any other possible alternatives

• Example:

  • We either ban hairspray or the world will end.

• The “Either-Or” Fallacy is also known as the false dilemma fallacy

Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc (False Cause)

• “After this, therefore because of this”

• Assuming that because two things happened, the first one caused the second one

• Example:

  • Every time my brother Bill uses hairspray, it is an extremely hot day.

Common types of Fallacies (false reasoning) used in communication

• Ad hominem - TO THE MAN! - instead of addressing the important topic at hand with facts you instead attack (or praise) the person

  • Name-calling

  • Mudslinging

  • Personal attack

  • “Poisoning the well”

  • Ethos

  • The person’s character is attacked

  • The person’s circumstances are noted

  • The person does not practice what is preached

  • “Attacking the person”

  • Three forms of Ad hominem: abusive, circumstantial, tu quoque

  • Identify the attack and show that the character or circumstances of the person has nothing to do with the truth or falsity of the proposition being defended.

• Ad Verecundiam (appeal to authority) - while sometimes it may be appropriate to cite an authority to support a point, often it is not. In particular, an appeal to authority is inappropriate if:

  • The authority is not an expert in the field

  • Experts in the field disagree on this issue

  • The authority was joking, drunk, or in some other way not being serious

  • Hearsay

  • Show that either the person cited is not an authority in the field, or that there is general disagreement among the experts in the field on this point.

• Slippery Slope - exaggerates the consequences of an action, usually to frighten readers

  • A chain of events

  • Focuses primarily on results or outcomes

  • INTO THE FUTURE

  • Illegitimate use of the ‘if-then’ operator

  • Identify the proposition P being refuted and identify the final event in the series of events. Then show that this final event need not occur as a consequence of P.

  • The Domino Theory

• Non sequitur - ‘it does not follow’ - connecting two topics that don’t have any connection based of assumptions

  • Several steps are missing in between

• Strawman - refutes a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position

  • A diversionary tactic that sets up another’s position in a way that can be easily rejected

  • The author attacks an argument different from (and weaker than) the opposition’s best argument

  • Show that the opposition’s argument has been misrepresented by showing that the opposition has a stronger argument. Describe the stronger argument.

  • The Straw Person

• Hasty Generalization - is an argument that draws interference from insufficient evidence

• Someone draws a conclusion about a population based on a sample size that’s not large enough

  • A broad claim based on a few occurrences

  • The sample is too small to support an inductive generalization about a population

  • Identify the size of the sample and the size of the population, then show that the sample size is too small. Note: a formal proof would require a mathematical calculation. This is the subject of probability theory. For now, you must rely on common sense.

  • Overgeneralization

• Either-or Fallacy/Polarization/False dilemma

  • Either-or Fallacy - only two options exist in a complex situation

  • Black/White Fallacy

  • Polarization - exaggerates positions and groups by representing them as extreme and divisive

  • False dilemma - ‘Either this or that’

  • Aka ‘excluded middle’

  • Illegitimate use of the ‘or’ operator

  • Logos

• (False cause) Post hoc - ‘one event caused another to happen’

  • A occurred, then B occurs; therefore, A causes B.

  • Look for time relationships (IN THE PAST)

  • Often superstitions are post hoc fallacies.

  • Coincidental Correlation, ‘too much of a coincidence’ argument

  • Show that the correlation is coincidental by showing that the effect would have occurred even if the cause did not occur, or that the effect was caused by something other than the suggested cause.

• Red herring - uses irrelevance to distract attention from the real issue

  • The basic idea is to “win” an argument by leading attention away from the argument and on to another topic.

• Begging the question - repeating the same thing as if it is the reason

  • (circular reasoning)

  • The truth of the conclusion is assumed by the premises. Often, the conclusion is simply restated in the premises in a slightly different form. In more difficult cases, the premise is a consequence of the conclusion.

  • Petitio principii

  • Show that in order to believe that the premises are true we must already agree that the conclusion is true.

• Appeal to Pity (or sympathy) - creating a “guilt trip”; the reader is persuaded to agree by sympathy

  • Ad miscercodiam

  • The reader is told to agree to the proposition because of the pitiful state of the author.

  • Identify the proposition and the appeal to pity and argue that the pitiful state of the arguer has nothing to do with the truth of the proposition.

  • ‘Root for the underdog’ regardless of the issues at hand

  • Pathos

  • Playing to Emotions

  • This allows manipulators to avoid responsibility for something

• Appeal to Tradition - ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’

  • ‘Because that’s how it’s always been done’

  • Common sense

  • Might an alternative policy work better?

  • Have circumstances changed over time?

  • Are there drawbacks to the long-standing policy?

• Bandwagon - ‘everyone’ supposedly thinks or does something, it must be right.

  • ‘Everyone else is doing it/believes it.’

  • Fear of being ‘left out’

  • Popularity/quantity with quality

  • Aka ‘Ad populum’, ‘appeal to the crowd’, ‘appeal to popularity’, ‘appeal to emotion’, ‘appeal to popular passions’, ‘argument from common sense’, ‘lying with statistics’

  • Emotional appeals often sway the population as a whole

  • The manipulator shares the same views as the audience