Blog 6

In chapter 4 of eating animals the author Jonathan Safranfoer presents a good argument by presenting multiple sides of one topic. Throughout chapter four he gives a multitudes of positions on the controversial topic of factory farming, He presents a point of view form an organic farmer, factory farmer, and an animal activist. This method allows him to avoid one of the most common logical fallacies. Black and white or only presenting a few sides of there argument, when in fact there can be multiple sides.  By avoid this common fallacy he makes his argument overall more believable. Also the sources he uses when presenting his argument are credible. This adds to the logic of his argument. It may make people not prone to vegetarianism more likely to pay attention, or take an interest in the topic he presents.

hasty generalization

In Eating Animals, Safran Foer talks about the vegetarian diet and the many health benefits that come with it. He uses the fallacy of hasty generalization by pretty much saying "since vegetarians have seen these health benefits, if you stop eating meat you will be healthy". Since there are many other factors that go into a persons health, putting all the blame on meat and saying the vegetarian lifestyle will cause the person to be completely healthy is an overgeneralization.
Safran Foer also uses ignorance as proof when he says the 24-hour flus and how they were "most likely" caused by a food-borne illness. Since he provides no proof other than a general statistic about how many cases of food-borne illnesses there are a year, he is basically just assuming that if someone is sick for a 24-hour time period it has to do with something they ate. Also using words like "probably" and "most likely" just shows again the lack of concrete evidence he has and how much assumption is going into his argument there.

Within Safran Foer's novel, he takes much time to describe in great detail how indeed the animals are processed in order for us to consume. He uses extremely manipulative language to paint a picture of total destruction and pain for such little birds, describing the processing as brutally as possible. He cruelly describes the process, yet he also does not mention that sometimes, doing some of those things can make it more sanitary for food consumption. A lot of those types of meats come with harmful types of bacterias which could cause our food to become extremely unhealthy, and could even lead to such bacterial ailments such as E. Coli, among others. In doing so, he falls into a logical fallacy of appealing too much to the emotions of average people, creating feelings of disgust and frustration within his intended audience. However, he does not mention the millions of acts initiated in order to reduce the amounts of food-borne illness in order to make it safer for food consumption. Safran Foer manipulates us into believing  that the food industry has complete disregard for what exactly we end up consuming, when only part of that may be true. His use of emotional language causes us to melt, and his descriptive language toys with our feelings of compassion in dealing with the animals, however, it's important to note that the people who do such things to our meat only do as such in order to make sure that the meat is indeed safe for consumption. Mentioning obscure diseases with only a small chance of being caught doesn't really add much to his cause.

Week 6 Post

One example of something that is a logical fallacy in Eating Animals is when Safran Foer is talking about the benefits of vegetarianism as told by the ADA (American Dietetic Association), and how they don’t want people to be vegetarians for the reasons Safran Foer believes they should be. The ADA has released plenty of information about why a vegetarian diet is the healthiest kind of diet. But, one thing they don’t do is talk about the reasons that not eating animals would be healthy. It is a logical fallacy because it is trying to be logical with the reasons a person should choose to be vegetarian, but in reality it is not naming the best reason why someone should be a vegetarian and give up meat, that could possibly harm their health. There are a few different reasons the ADA gives as to why a person should be a vegetarian, “Vegetarian diets are often associated with a number of health advantages, including lower blood cholesterol levels, lower risk of heart disease…lower blood pressure levels, and lower risk of hypertension” (144-145). Safran Foer doesn’t believe that the vegetarian diet alone leads to these things, “I talked to several of the leading American nutritionists about this…and heard the same thing again and again: vegetarianism is at least as healthy as a diet that includes meat” (145). This means that the information that the ADA has been using to argue its point all these years, is more of a logical fallacy that can be disproven.  

Blog Post #6

Safran Foer uses a number of fallacies in his book, especially the fallacy "appeal to emotion." On page 132, he describes a worker who wished to be called "Maria" who has had many surgeries and struggles to operate her hands normally due to pain. When he makes this point, he tries to appeal to our emotion making us think about the use of our hands and what we would if we couldn't use them to their full potential, things like washing dishes or even typing this blog post. He also makes the statement that she works for eight dollars an hour. Eight dollars an hour (especially in California) is not enough money to make a decent living on. (Wikipedia shows that the hourly minimum wage is at eight dollar an hour.) Also, using the name like Maria gives us an inclination to believe that she is a hispanic worker. We see in many situations that it is a true statement to say that many hispanic persons are employed by chicken factory farmers, but we do not know this is the case. This is an example of the fallacy "composition/division" because while the majority of employees at these factory farms may be hispanic, we do not know that "Maria" is definitely of the same race.

Week 5 Post

I really enjoyed the Rhetoric of a Coffee Shop assignment. I thought that it was a great way for us to be able to see rhetorical tactics used in a classroom setting, and see them applied out into the real world. In looking at the various aspects of the coffee shop, you can really see the different appeals that coffee makers make to get us to drink their coffee. Within a shop there's so much that the coffee makers do to make a coffee shop more appealing to a person who enters their shop. Within our shop, we noticed all of these minute details that we would probably not have noticed otherwise. Our shop in particular had situated their shop in such a way that it released a very bright and earthy vibe, which set the atmosphere for the rest of the shop to be set to be a very welcoming, Earth-friendly place. This, coupled with the fact that the place had many different types of teas and recyclable friendly options reminded us that the locale we traveled to took great pride in the fact that they were rather environmentally friendly and more open to more eco-friendly options. They used good amounts of logos-ethos-pathos in trying to convince us of this fact as well. The logos came in from the 100 % recyclable found among all of their equipment. Additionally, the use of pathos and ethos came in from minute things, such as the plants and the airy exterior and the green touches found throughout the store. Overall it was a very enlightening experience.

Week 6 post

                One logical fallacy that is portrayed in Eating Animals, chapter five, is the appeal to authority. This fallacy is based on that because an authority thinks something, it must therefore be true. This is used when Safran Foer claims that “the USDA has an informal policy to avoid saying that we should ‘eat less’ of any food no matter how damaging its health impact may be” just because that’s what “Nestle argues” (147). Therefore, because Nestle thinks this is the case, then it must be true and “we have let the food industry craft our national nutrition policy” (147). Safran Foer provides no other evidence of this being true besides that it is what Nestle has claimed, which isn’t sufficient enough to support his argument. He does not have enough proof that the USDA has this informal policy, making his logic weak.