How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic (2006)

110 How to Wîn Every Argument

Christmas coming up and the cold snows of winter about to descend. I

ask instead, 'can we afford not to employ Jeeves?'

(Yes we can. Of course, we might decide to afford him, which is quite

a different thing.)

Quite apart from its use in courts of law - where no self-

respecting defence lawyer will venture without his handkerchief

• the ad misericordiam pokes its head into any argument where
  facts have consequences. No one would allow the possible fate
  of an individual to influence our conviction about so obvious a
  fact as 2 + 2 = 4, but where there is less certainty we might be
  tempted to allow our pity to give the benefit of the doubt.
  Hearts and flowers are a prerequisite of public policy. No
  question of simple fact can be settled without consideration of
  the effect it might have on the sick, the old, the feeble, the blind
  and the lame.

If we decide that foreign aid is ineffective, and does not raise living

standards, then we are condemning people in the poorer countries to a

life of degrading poverty, squalor and disease.

(If foreign aid is ineffective, the fact condemns them to these con-

sequences. Maybe we should do something else about it.)

The appeal of the ad misericordiam is in our recognition that
pity should have a place in guiding our actions. The point of the
fallacy is that it has no place in our determination of truth and
falsehood. When it steps from one territory to the other, reason
changes place with it.
Its allure is hard to resist. The whole of Dickens' A Christmas
Carol is one giant argumentum ad misericordiam. Here is Scrooge,
making an honest living, assailed (along with the reader) by the
appeal to pity. Bob Cratchit commands a skill as a clerk and
scribe, and is perfectly free to seek employment elsewhere at