Wow, I haven't posted in a long time! I've been writing final papers and final exams, so I haven't wanted to write anything else. I wrote one exam question for my rhetoric class on Aristotle's fallacious topics applied to current TV commercials and advertisements. I thought this piece of the essay might be interesting to some of my readers. Feel free to ignore the Aristotle stuff, unless that kind of thing floats your boat.
The next advertisement I am going to analyze, a page from the website of Enfamil baby formula, uses the fallacious topic “From affirming the consequent.” This fallacious argument is made when two things are considered the same because they share one or more characteristics. It is fallacious because it ignores the presence of other characteristics which show that the things are not the same. Aristotle’s example of this kind of argument is that because beggars sing and dance in the temple precincts and because happy people sing and dance in the temple precincts, beggars must be happy people. This argument is fallacious because singing and dancing in the temple precincts is only one characteristic of happy people. There are many others that beggars do not share which the argument ignores.
The Enfamil Premium ad uses this fallacious topic by equating Enfamil Premium with breast milk by showing that they share certain characteristics. Under the green oval labeled “Growth,” the viewer finds this claim: “Healthy growth patterns similar to breastfed babies, in both length and weight.” This is the argument from affirming the consequent. Since both babies fed with Enfamil and babies fed with breast milk share similar growth patterns in length and weight, Enfamil and breast milk are almost the same. The other characteristics of breast milk (such as lower incidence of allergies and type 1 diabetes, the antibodies received from mom that are tailored to the environment the baby lives in, and many, many others that I will not bore you with), the very ones that would differentiate it from Enfamil, are ignored.
We find the same fallacious argument again on the same page in the graph of mental development at eighteen months. The graph shows that babies fed Enfamil have nearly the same mental test scores for memory, language, and problem solving as babies who are fed breast milk. This visual representation falls even more clearly into the category of arguments from affirming the consequent because the bars for breast milk and Enfamil Premium are shown at a scale that makes them appear almost exactly the same size and because they are the same color. According to this argument, since test scores for babies fed breast milk and babies fed Enfamil are almost the same, breast milk and Enfamil are almost the same. The ad ignores the other characteristics that breast milk and Enfamil do not share, focusing only on the one characteristic which they do share and making them appear to be of the same value.
Though they are not as explicit, most of the arguments in this ad might also be arguing by affirming the consequent. Because breast milk is the silent standard to which the formula is being compared, any statement claiming that the formula is promoting a health benefit is equating it to breast milk based on that characteristic. For example, when the ad claims that Enfamil is “dedicated to providing complete, balanced nutrition,” what is the standard for infant nutrition that is complete and balanced? The standard is breast milk; we know that a formula is complete and balanced when it mimics the nutritional content of breast milk. So, Enfamil is claiming that since their formula is complete and balanced and breast milk is complete and balanced, Enfamil and breast milk are the same. Even assuming that their claim about being complete and balanced is true (which it isn’t), there are other characteristics of breast milk (like the benefits of its delivery method for both mom and baby or its composition changing based on the individual baby’s needs) which differentiate it from Enfamil. Again, Enfamil has chosen to ignore any characteristics that do not support the similarity between Enfamil and breast milk.
