Reading Notes--mostly précis and summary!
Adam Kissel

How do we persuade others? "There is a large literature about persuasion" already--see n. 8, pp. 2444-45.

Singer persuaded his law students to sympathize with the argument of workers whose plant was about to close, by getting them to empathize with the situation of the workers. His strategy was to make them consider a law school suddenly deciding that a third of the class would fail. "This sense of connection created a felt relationship between them" (2453). But it is unclear to me whether this strategy of emotionalism is morally justified. Singer shows how this strategy brought his students "in touch with their own values" (2457), but he does not admit that the trust breached in his law school example differs importantly from the trust breached by the plant owners.

The argument here seems to be that you can get others to believe your side of the story if you can convince them, whether or not it's true, that your values and their values are actually the same.

At least, though, persuasion to the point of understanding another's perspective requires acknowledgment of "a relationship between oneself and [the other]" (2458). The weaker form of the argument is that you should strive to understand your opponent's values, because you then can treat him more humanely in your argument (and the values might turn out to be the same anyway).