So, in the world of argumentation, the pendulum has swung pretty hard to the pathos side of things. Pathos is just a fancy word for emotional appeals, of course. It means that we focus on feelings and use words that mostly equate to sensitivity and getting people to connect on an emotional level.
The other side of the pendulum, though, is logic. Logic isn’t pretty. It’s more like the awkward cousin the cool girl has to bring to the party because her mom says she has to go too. Logic is edgy. It doesn’t feel much of anything. But it knows a lot, and it won’t shut up about numbers and evidence and proving you know what you’re talking about.
But, in the world of argumentation, we need them both. Pathos and logic. They work together. The best arguments have both, but these days, we have a tendency to push logic off toward the walls while we splash some flashy colors and fancy lights on the dance floor, play a well-made video, and call a viral hashtag an argumentative success.
But logic, as plain and boring as it can be, is important. And we ignore it to our great loss.
This is most apparent when we try to show cause. Arguing cause is a big deal. To show that something caused something else is the basis for every legal case we make. Before someone can be punished for a crime, we have to be able to prove they actually DID the crime. They caused the harm. It was their fault.
Showing cause requires that you can prove certain connections between two events. Specifically, to demonstrate cause you have to be able to show that the first thing happened (the woman wore that dress) and it led directly to the second event (he raped her) with no intervening influences. THIS is the important part.
If there is anything that can intervene in the situation (as there clearly is in the “dress to rape” argument), you are not dealing with cause. PERIOD.
When we talk about sexual harassment or assault, there is always an intervening event. The path between her wearing the dress (or going to the party or whatever) and any sexual harassment or assault is littered with intervening events: namely, his choices. Her dress might cause his initial, involuntary physical reaction. But after that, he begins to make choices: to look again (and again), to desire her, to claim her in his mind as something he deserves, to objectify her, to touch her, to speak to her, to force himself on her.
All of those choices are his alone. And that precludes any possible causal link between her dress or party choices and his behavior. In other words, no woman ever causes her own harassment.
And yet, people often confuse causation (showing cause) with another logical connection between ideas: correlation. Correlation means that two (or more) things are related and impact each other. There is influence between or among them, but what that exact influence isn’t clear. Any other piece of information (what clothes she wore, that she attended the party, that he spent a lot of money buying drinks for her) falls squarely in the correlation side of things. They may be interesting details, but they have nothing to do with the direct cause. And they are almost entirely fueled by the pathos side of the argument: focusing on how someone felt (or feels now) and not the actual events as they happened.
Pathos is necessary, but it can complicate or confuse our arguments far too easily. The ability to argue cause well (or to hear when it’s being confused with correlation) will help us make better arguments and respond more effectively to the arguments we hear.
What do you think?
Do you prefer pathos or logic? What arguments have you heard that confused cause and correlation? Do you think including logic with pathos helps or hinders our communication?
