Induction

This now brings us to the induction, which is the general conclusion based on facts and cases.

These facts would be the following:

The nuclear weapons dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed tens of thousands of people due to the blast and the radioactive fallout.

Nuclear weapons today are much more powerful.

Countries like North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, Israel, and India have nuclear weapons and are located in volatile regions.

One nuclear war between Pakistan and India could cause a nuclear winter around the globe.

With these facts, your deduction, and other pieces of logic, you will have made an effective argument that, in fact, nuclear weapons are dangerous and should be banned. You have not lied and you have appealed to the reason of those who are listening to you.

The appeal to emotion will work differently. Identified as pathos, the philosopher Cicero was well known for his encouragement of ending any argument or oration with an appeal to emotion to get those listening to agree with your point of view. While it would be great if everyone only listened to appeals to reason, the truth is that the appeal to emotion is extremely effective, because humans are greatly influenced by their emotions.

One method that is used extensively with the appeal to emotions is images. A good example of this is Drivers Education. Explaining the danger of drinking and driving in an appeal to reason may not be as effective as an appeal-to-emotion argument that shows the car crash victims who were in drunk driving accidents.

Concerning our example above, we could use the following examples as to why nuclear weapons are dangerous.

You could show pictures of radiation burn victims from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

You could show the destruction caused by small nuclear weapons in those cities.

You could show videos of nuclear weapons exploding around the planet and the damage that they cause.

You could show the video of Robert Oppenheimer, the creator of the nuclear bomb, where he states with remorse that he has become the god Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds.

You could also appeal to the emotions of the audience by talking of the pain of radiation, and how people literally had their skin falling off due to the extreme radiation burns that they suffered in the nuclear blast.

The third appeal of persuasion is the appeal to one's character, often called ethos. This method of persuasion is established through speech and discourse. According to Aristotle, the persuader desires to appear knowledgeable and benevolent to the person they are trying to persuade in order to make the appeal of one's character work. Cicero felt the initial portion of a speech needed to be the establishment of one's character to the audience.

With the appeal to a person's ethics, one of the following has to be achieved in a given argument:

Are you a reasonable person?

Are you an authority figure?

Are you ethical?

Are you concerned with the well-being of the audience?

With the appeal to a person's character, the audience must trust the person that is talking to them, otherwise this will fail.

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