Week 6 (logical fallacy) Sangkyung

This week we discussed about chapter 5 in Eating Animals. In chapter 5, Foer presents the diseases that are spread in the meat process. He describes the dangerous health risks of the meat process, from H1-N1, respiratory problems, and immune system deficiencies. Through his logic he maintains a position of how these issues seriously need to be amended to better benefit the consumer. However, even though Foer consistently claims a rational argument, at the very last in chapter 5, he is falling a logical fallacy which is a flaw in reasoning. When he mentions that “If the world followed America’s lead, it would consume over 165 billion chickens annually (even if the world population didn’t increase). And then what? Two hundred billion? Fie hundred? Will the cages stack higher or grow smaller or both? On what date will we accept the loss of antibiotics as a tool to prevent human suffering? How many days of the week will our grandchildren be ill? Where does it end?”, his logical fallacy is “appeal to emotion” which is described as Pathos by Heinrichs in Thank you for arguing. According to yourlogicalfallacyis.com, appeals to emotion include appeals to fear, envy, hatred, pity, pride, and more and are a very common and effective argument tactic. However the problem and fallacy occurs when emotion is used instead of a logical argument, or to obscure the fact that no compelling rational reason exists for one’s position. At the very last in chapter 5, he is only resorting to emotion thus it seems that he does not appeal to reason at all. At here, he supports none of his claims with evidence. This argument can make his opponents justifiably emotional.