Call to terror

The call to terror (in Latin argumentum AD metum or argumentum in terrorem ) is a fallacious reasoning in which a person tries to create approval of a Proposal by using existing threats or fears.

Examples

We must increase the taxes, if not more and more of hospital will have to close.
You should stop smoking, if not you will die young person like your father.
the suspension of certain civil liberties is necessary to fight terrorism.

Explanation

The existing fears are exploited to create a support with the proposal of the interlocutor. A fear cannot normally prove something and it is there that the fraud is. The development of this fear makes it possible to pass in addition to the exact expression of the cause and effect link under heard. What makes it possible to amplify the importance of it, in hiding the weaknesses, to see the real absence.

To take again the preceding example on the increases of taxation: We must increase the taxes, if not more and more of hospital will have to close . An argumentation " convenable" could be:

the hospital expenditure increased
No other field did not decrease its expenditure
No other field cannot see its budget decreasing
the public revenues in the actual position of the things did not increase
We do not have any other possibility of increasing these incomes but the taxes

Thus we must increase them if not more and more hospitals will have to close. One sees thus that the fact of masking the cause and effect link between the increase in the taxes and at least the closing of the hospitals allows in hiding the weaknesses, since the expression of each one of these expressions would push the contradictors to check the veracity immediately of it, or to require evidence of them.

Use

The call to terror is particularly snuffed by the politicians, but also by the advertizing executives:

by showing accidents for a campaign of traffic control, to incite people to lead less quickly;
by showing the damage caused by fire or the floods, to praise the merits of a company of Insurance.

So that a call to terror functions, it is necessary to join together four factors:

a threat, for example an car accident,
recommendation of a solution (the proposal), for example to put its safety belt,
the perception which the solution is effective against the threat,
the perception which the solution is simple to implement.

It is possible to put in failure this fallacious reasoning by wondering whether the threat is legitimate, then if this one is not exaggerated, then to wonder whether the action will reduce the threat and finally, which are the merits of the solution out of the threat.

Close fallacious reasoning

The call to terror is connected to the Faux dilemma, in which a solution is proposed like only alternative to an alarming situation. It is also about a Argumentum AD consequentiam in which the consequence-proof is a fear.

The call to terror is one of the subcategories of the Raison of the emotions.

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