# Appeals to Emotion, or You Won't Understand Until You're In My Shoes **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 18, 2004, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/appeals-to-emotion-or-you-wont-understand-until-youre-in-my-shoes/240612 "2004-04-18T01:48:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2004, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/appeals-to-emotion-or-you-wont-understand-until-youre-in-my-shoes/240612/101 "2004-04-28T13:29:55Z")
> [@Mr2001](#): > > Well, if you don’t see anything I’ve said about that as an explanation, then I doubt I will convince you. I think wanting to share one’s experiences with others is a good enough justification in this case. You clearly don’t. And personally, I hope that I will die before I ever come to believe that “sharing experiences” is ever justification for hurting other people. The idea is revolting. > [@](#): > > - > > Speaking of necessitating this pain, though, I hope you will address my point about the review. Why does the desire to share your opinion of a work justify causing the artist pain, if the desire to share the experience of enjoying the work itself doesn’t justify it? - Because while it’s certainly a nice thing to want to spread joy, this has to take a backseat to _not_ causing suffering. _Primum non nocere._ Given the choice between “Let’s do something that makes a bunch of people kinda happy, but one person completely miserable” and “Let’s not do it, and everyone can just feel however they were feeling already”, I’m going to choose the latter. The one that causes harm to _no one_. That your moral beliefs are different is apparent, if incomprehensible, to me, but you have no reason to expect support for such a selfish, uncaring world view. ---
**Author:** ![yosemite](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/3ab097/32.png) [@yosemite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yosemite)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2004, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/appeals-to-emotion-or-you-wont-understand-until-youre-in-my-shoes/240612/102 "2004-04-28T13:43:37Z")
> [@Mr2001](#): > > **yosemite** : I wrote a longer response to your post, but… eh, why bother? As I expected, you’re ignoring the compromise that was the whole point of my position in the last thread (which has spilled over into this one), and focusing instead on what I was arguing last year based on ideals alone. I’m not going for this compromise because it is too little, too late, and I suspect is motivated by gutlessness. I expected better of you. If you had clearly posed this compromise, unwaveringly, right from the start, it would not be viewed as gutless. But after all this time—only after you saw that the “copying things from people’s homes” schtick was going over like a lead balloon with _everyone_—did you stop trying to defend it and want to remove it from the discussion. > [@](#): > > You clearly have no idea what it is that DJs do. :shrug: Perhaps so. But I do know that it should not be an impossible expectation to create original works. That’s how it is with most genres of creativity (music, visual arts, writing) and that’s invariably how it will always be. Besides, art is a big _whoooooosh_ to you. But it doesn’t stop you from spouting off about it. > [@](#): > > I You continue to pretend you know my motivations and what I “care about”, when you obviously have no idea - though you might if you had actually read the posts where I explain them myself. Wow, you almost sound offended or hurt or something, because I believe that you don’t care about artists’ feelings. Surprising, really. You do everything you can for months to reinforce this impression, but act hurt when I come to that conclusion? Funny. I am happy to leave this discussion to folks who are much smarter than me (Lamia, pervert, etc.) for the time being. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2004, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/appeals-to-emotion-or-you-wont-understand-until-youre-in-my-shoes/240612/103 "2004-04-28T22:46:25Z")
> [@yosemite](#): > > I am happy to leave this discussion to folks who are much smarter than me (Lamia, pervert, etc.) for the time being. 🙂 As flattering as it is to be called smart, I’m afraid I can’t carry on here much more – it’s the Golden Week holiday here and I’m off to Kyoto in a while. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2004, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/appeals-to-emotion-or-you-wont-understand-until-youre-in-my-shoes/240612/104 "2004-04-29T04:29:05Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > Because while it’s certainly a nice thing to want to spread joy, this has to take a backseat to _not_ causing suffering. _Primum non nocere._ Given the choice between “Let’s do something that makes a bunch of people kinda happy, but one person completely miserable” and “Let’s not do it, and everyone can just feel however they were feeling already”, I’m going to choose the latter. The one that causes harm to _no one_. So, just to be clear, would you say that a reviewer shouldn’t publish a negative review if it would hurt the artist’s feelings? I don’t see anything in your answer that distinguishes between copying an artist’s work against his will, and publishing a bad review of that work against his will. They both cause the artist pain, they both go against his wishes, and they’re both unnecessary acts. How far do others need to go to avoid hurting the artist’s feelings? ---
**Author:** ![dhsapiens](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@dhsapiens](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dhsapiens)\ **Post date:** [May 8, 2004, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/appeals-to-emotion-or-you-wont-understand-until-youre-in-my-shoes/240612/105 "2004-05-08T20:48:24Z")
The false dichotomy here is that logic and emotion are opposites. All emotions, feelings, intuitions etc. are logical. They come from the firing of neurons within the hypothalamus/limbic system. They come about because an individual brain is an individual brain that responds in a given way to a particular stimulus, given the preconditioning of everything that ever happened to you before. Anyway, yes, legally speaking the argument of “I did it because I couldn’t help it due to extreme emotional duress” is totally supported by the American judicial system. It’s the diff between first and second degree murder, for example. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/appeals-to-emotion-or-you-wont-understand-until-youre-in-my-shoes/240612.md?page=5)