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Showing posts from July, 2020

Language, Logic, and Action Pt. 4: Appeals to Pity

by Hiram R. Diaz III If you’ve been paying attention to the prophets of the faux-pocalypse, then you’re probably aware of their collectivist moral exhortations. These exhortations not only echo the aggressive “Mao era”-style fear sloganeering of current day Communist China (see here) intended to manipulate the public into compliance with draconian social control measures, they are also examples of the appeal to pity. The appeal to pity, or argumentum ad misericordiam, is a logical fallacy in which …pity or a related emotion such as sympathy or compassion is appealed to for the sake of getting a conclusion accepted. 1 This fallacy is usually employed when one cannot logically justify his conclusion. Consider the following hypothetical scenario: Person A: Did you know that the official CO