Logical Fallacy #3 Ad Misericordiam (appeal to pity)

-John Dunfee

In offering an argument, pity is appealed to. Usually this happens when people argue for special treatment on the basis of their need. E.g. a student argues that the teacher should let him/her pass the examination because he/she needs it in order to graduate. Of course, pity might be a relevant consideration in certain conditions, as in contexts involving charity.
 
This is to me the easiest logical fallacy to point out because it also seems to be a red herring to distract from the argument at hand. It is an irrelevant attempt to get you past an argument by appealing to your emotions, especially pity. It is used as a smoke screen argument just in case their argument fails they rely and distracting you by pressuring you to have pity on them. If you fail to recognize this fallacy than your opponent will catch you off guard. The opponent tries to make you have empathy to distract you from other fallacies they might making. Here are some examples:
 
A man is pulled over for speeding and the officer gives a fine for Speeding. The man argues with the cop about whether he was speeding or not, then realizes he isn’t going to win the argument. He resorts to telling the cop that he was speeding to the hospital because his wife was having a kid and he wants to make sure he witnesses his child’s birth. Whether this is true or not is irrelevant to the fact that he was speeding. He tried to get the officer to have pity on him to get him past the fact that he was breaking the law of going over the assigned MPH for the speed limit. It was used also as a red herring to get them past the fact that was speeding.
 
Another example of this would be if you are in a court room and you are being charged with first degree murder. The evidence is against you and you have no way to fight the evidence, so you will have to attack the emotions of the judge. You tell the judge: your honor I have donated to many charities to help people in third world countries. Have pity on me! The judge realizes that you have committed first degree murder and the charity donations are irrelevant to fact of defendant committing first degree murder. He is stilled charged with life in prison.
 
Both of these examples are demonstrate how pity is used to distract people in arguments to appeal to emotions. This isn’t to common in theist vs. atheist debates except when Hell is brought up. The Atheist will say I’ve done good in my life and no one will deny that, but no human is good to the standard which is God’s nature. Which means our crimes against his image on us is not a counter balance by good works like just how the murderer tried to get off free because he donated to charity before. I will also make a future video addressing Hell because obviously it is a serious issue. Now that you have learned about the appeal to pity logical fallacy you can spot in debates you have with other people or skeptics.

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Link: http://philosophy.lander.edu/logic/misery.html