The Aristotle Appeal of Logos

Logos Appeal

In any scholastic argument, Aristotle's logos appeal would prove most advantageous and be the most sensible.

Arguments that base themselves on logos (known sometimes as logical appeals) entail proofs and assertions that confirm an individual's reasoning skills (Ethos, Pathos, and Logos ). Of Aristotle's three appeals, 'logos' appears to be the most scholastic; it forms a major part of all college-level writing assignments. In order to demonstrate that one has meticulously considered the topic under study, one should (Ethos, Pathos, and Logos ):

Carefully examine one's personal assumptions and find out if, under any conditions, those assumptions prove wrong. If this happens, one might have to consider not grounding one's claim on them.

Steer clear of flaws in logic.

Also, one must bear in mind not to presume that:

An event is the cause of another simply due to sequential ascension.

An individual's experience will be typical of the experiences of others (i.e., his experience will not be unique).

Only two alternatives exist.

Carefully phrase one's claims: only if there is no exception whatsoever, should one make assertions regarding "everywhere," "everyone" or "always." "

Support every personal claim using examples, quotations, or statistics.

Ensure that one's proofs accrue from duly recognized authorities and experts.

As far as possible, make use of recent information sources (not older than 5 years). New findings might dispute, add to or differ from some older ones.

Whenever appropriate, employ scientific or historical comparisons.

All of the aforementioned steps need to be adopted in scholastic arguments, because of three reasons. The crux of scholastic argument is facts (Arguments based on Facts and Reason-Logos). Authentic and accurate fact collection and transmission is what scholars as well as journalists must adhere to, strictly. Arguments that are grounded on truths and proofs are more preferable than arguments that solely work on reasoning. Also, human nature is inclined to believe claims which are measurable, countable, analyzable or perceivable, instead of claims defended solely by words (Arguments based on Facts and Reason-Logos).

Drawback

Aristotle, however, observes that in regular writing and speech, people typically employ what he terms as an 'enthymeme' or rhetorical 'syllogism', which represents an argument wherein some claims or evidences are unsaid and merely assumed and thus unsubstantiated. For instance, ordinarily no individual would believe the philosopher Socrates to be immortal. The common assumption would be that he would either be killed or die a natural death after growing old. Consequently, it can logically be inferred that: Socrates is human, thus, he is mortal. However, all assumptions don't tend to be as apparent as the above example. For instance, when 14th century Asia and Europe regions were struck by the Black Death (bubonic plague), that claimed the lives of around 75% of the populace in barely two decades, the mode of transmission of the disease was not known. At one juncture, it was assumed that cats spread the disease. If this assumption is considered, the evident solution to this epidemic would be exterminating the cats; consequently, cats were killed on sight. It is now known, however, that rat fleas are the carriers of plague. Cats hunt rats, but the mistake of exterminating the former resulted in a rise in the population of rats, in turn, increasing the population of the plague carriers (fleas); ultimately, there was a rise in plague cases. While the decision to kill off cats seemed like a logical way to deal with the problem, it was found on an erroneous assumption. Often, probabilities, and not clear truths, are the basis of rhetorical claims. Medieval Europeans really did not have a way to ascertain the actual source of the disease. However, they believed they must attempt at solving it, and the hypothesis of cats as plague carriers appeared probable. This, unfortunately, is the case with numerous issues faced even now. Though the real key to the problem is not known with complete certainty, we still have to act anyway (Edlund & Pomona, n.d.). In the context of academic arguments, if an individual presents an argument to someone without strong logic (upon which logos, to some extent, relies), the latter would fail to comprehend the logos approach of the presenter. We are thus presented with a quandary.