The Out-Of-Bounds

“The purpose of argument is to be persuasive, not correct.” (156) As this chapter says, sometimes we tend to go off topic and care about winning instead of persuading. Which is wrong. It only causes our audience to get mad, and it doesn’t get you anywhere. Heinrichs states that “when someone commits a logical fallacy, it rarely helps to point it out.” (156)

At the end of the chapter, the author came up with seven  “fouls” in argument, which I thought were very true. Here are some of them with examples:

1.                   “Refusing to hear the other side.” I would say that this is the foul that we most commit. When proving a point we think that we are the correct ones and don’t want others to change our minds. From minute 1:20 to 1:36 of this video, the man changes his mind about his order and the woman doesn’t let him explain and she just calls security.

2.                   “Humiliation.” In this video, the girl corrects her father for pronouncing a word incorrectly; instead of agreeing with her he laughs at her correction.

3.                   “Threats.” In second 0:29 of this clip, these two girls are fighting, just when one of them threatens the other by saying: “you have no idea what I’m capable of.”