Reading Comprehension Success in 20 Minutes a Day, 3rd Edition

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E M O T I O N A L V E R S U S L O G I C A L A P P E A L S
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as throwing away a soft drink can? I urge both the
council and the mayor to reject this misguided
proposal.
Chances are that no matter how you 
feel
about
mandatory recycling programs, this passage provoked a
reaction in you. Perhaps you found some of the writer’s
arguments convincing; perhaps they simply made you
want to argue back. But take another look at the passage.
Is there any appeal to your sense of logic here—reason,
evidence, or common sense? Or is the author only
appealing to your preexisting ideas and feelings about
environmentalism and government programs?
What Reasons Does the Writer Offer?
To help you see whether the writer’s appeals are based
on logic or emotion, break down his argument. The
writer offers three different reasons for opposing the
mandatory recycling proposal. List them here.
1.
2.
3.
You probably noticed that each of the three para-
graphs deals with a different reason that the writer
opposes the mandatory recycling program. They are:
1.
Recycling programs do not help the environment
and people who support the mandatory recycling
program do so simply in order to make them-
selves feel better about a declining environment.
2.
The people who support mandatory recycling
also supported a failed program to increase city
bus routes.
3.
A mandatory recycling program would not actu-
ally cause people who do not presently recycle to
begin recycling.
Are the Appeals Logical?
The next step is to see if these reasons are
logical.
Does
the author come to these conclusions based on reason,
evidence, or common sense? If you look carefully, you
will see that the answer is 
no
. Each of the writer’s argu-
ments is based purely on emotion without any logic to
support it.
Begin with the first reason:
Recycling programs
do not help the environment and people who support the
mandatory recycling program do so simply in order to
make themselves feel better about a declining environ-
ment.
Is there any logic behind this argument? Is this
statement based on evidence, such as poll data show-
ing a link between feeling bad about the environment
and supporting the program, or environmental reports
showing that recycling doesn’t improve the environ-
ment to any appreciable degree?
Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with
this author, you can probably see that this argument is
based only in emotion rather than in logic. The argu-
ment crumbles when you break it down. The author
tries to blunt any skepticism about his argument by say-
ing that “everyone knows” that recycling doesn’t
accomplish very much and that people support it
mostly for selfish reasons. He states this as if it was an
established fact, but he fails to establish it with evi-
dence. Even though many people may agree, no one can
correctly claim that everyone knows this to be true—
as presented, it is mere opinion. In fact, many people
would argue in turn that recycling does a great deal to
help clean up the environment. And if the writer can-
not say for a fact that recycling doesn’t work, how can
he convincingly assert that people support it for selfish
reasons?
Even without this flaw, the writer’s argument is
not logical because there is no evidence in this essay that
the particular mandatory recycling program being
discussed by the city council will not work. The author
moves from stating his opposition to the program in
the first sentence to a paragraph of unconvincing gen-
eralities about recycling programs in general.