tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697041069822813301.post3725384007126344528..comments2023-04-07T04:36:21.582-05:00Comments on Musing Aloud: The Fallacy of the Grinch Revelation?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02343632915029739024noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697041069822813301.post-5995543557546262112011-03-15T18:17:45.088-05:002011-03-15T18:17:45.088-05:00Jason: I agree generally with your argument, but m...Jason: I agree generally with your argument, but my formulation of "emotionalist" implies neither that the person experiences rich emotions or that there's a dichotomy between thinking and emotions. Essentially, by that term I am describing a person who adopts and discards the ideas he holds as true according to how they make him feel, not what he *thinks*. I do not advocate stoicism, but rather that one's emotions should follow one's ideas. Emotionalists flip this around: They experience an emotion (that follows from an unidentified idea they hold), but then leap to the conclusion that that emotion is some kind of revelation, that it can tell them something about the truth status or morality of something.<br /><br />And in my case, these people may be angry when I confront their emotionally influenced conclusions, but their appeals to my emotions aren't just angry frothing, they're actually trying to convince me their conclusions are true/valid by attempting to make me "feel" the same way, i.e. have the same emotional revelation.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02343632915029739024noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697041069822813301.post-30403613031954378502011-03-15T15:47:54.512-05:002011-03-15T15:47:54.512-05:00I don't think you get money for identifying lo...I don't think you get money for identifying logical fallacies. You mostly just get a lot of people mad at you.Kathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10378628756310960254noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697041069822813301.post-12079948399463651462011-03-15T10:15:27.945-05:002011-03-15T10:15:27.945-05:00The term emotionalist makes no sense. To say that ...The term emotionalist makes no sense. To say that people today "feel" so good is patently false. I feel exponentially greater and have stronger emotions when calmly eating my breakfast reading the morning newspaper than than the average person today feels in their most hysterical, rage-filled moment. People aren't emotionalist today. They're faking it. They are going through the motions.<br /><br />And they are not trying to pawn on your feelings when you intellectually confront them. They get angry when seriously challenged by ideas because it's easier than strenuous thought. It's easier to show a picture of a fetus, when arguing about abortion, than going through the philosophic and scientific evidence (like the fact that a fetus does not practice breathing until the 7th or 8th month of pregnancy, at which point the lungs are still not fully formed; meaning the fetus does not even practice breathing, is not breathing because it has no functioning lungs, for the first 7 months).<br /><br />People today are incredibly stressed from being brought up in such a dreary, conservative, timid culture. So people either keep acting conservatively out of fear of social ostracization, or they desperately lash out (semi-conservatively) against conservatism.<br /><br />Plus, using the term emotionalist (defined as relying on one's emotions as a means of knowledge) implies that there is some dichotomy between thinking and emotions. People today are phony, scared, conservative, superficial, lazy, hysterical, etc., but not emotional.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697041069822813301.post-64125365938550507882011-03-14T19:37:03.085-05:002011-03-14T19:37:03.085-05:00Darn. There goes my million dollars.Darn. There goes my million dollars.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02343632915029739024noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3697041069822813301.post-28849784485998730002011-03-14T19:21:30.102-05:002011-03-14T19:21:30.102-05:00Appeal to emotion was one of the first broad categ...Appeal to emotion was one of the first broad categories of fallacies identified. It subsumes a number of popular fallacies including the ad hominem. Even before logic, the Greeks identified three kinds of speech (really three types of arguments), one of which was pathos aka appeal to emotion. Pathos was considered the basest of the three varieties.Kathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10378628756310960254noreply@blogger.com