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by SilasX 4729 days ago
Argument from emotion.
4 comments

Swooping down to declare a fallacy then immediately swishing your cape and dashing away is highly unlikely to gain much social traction or admiration.

Also, when arguing if something is in a particular spirit, it's appropriate to discuss emotions and principles.

It was just a brief way of saying, "All you've communicated is that the equation of the two doesn't feel right, without giving anyone a reason to deem your view more persuasive."

This is basically what happened:

A: That seems dangerously close to eugenics, in that it's weeding out people with bad genes.

B: Oh yeah? If you distorted your view by listening to crying moms who agree with me (and not similar weepers on the other side), you'd agree with me.

Me: Argument from emotion.

Let's try something a little more intellectual: there's also the aspect that eugenics is an idea directed to the improvement of humanity (an idea I'm... suspicious of) and abortions are decision by individuals reflecting individual circumstance. I don't believe these decisions are made on the eugenics basis: that disabled people are somehow worse than other people.

Eugenics is relatively easy to judge: you can get all the facts. Individual decisions are always harder: you don't know the full circumstance. I'm not saying that their aren't abortions made for obscene reasons (terminating girls is an obvious example), but not all are.

Yes. Because we are humans, not Vulcans.

Someone saying: "Don't hit me, please" is also an argument from emotion.

That's not an argument, it's a request.
I claim that any argument about "in spirit" is necessarily about emotion. The original statement struck me as veering pretty close to Godwin's law.
Argument from fallacy.