Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments: Amazon.ca: T. Edward Damer: Books

Product Description

Book Description

ATTACKING FAULTY REASONING is the most comprehensive, readable, and theoretically sound book on the common fallacies. It is designed to help one construct and evaluate arguments. The overriding purpose of the text is to help the students recognize when they construct or encounter a good or successful argument of a particular action or belief. This one skill is reinforced on every page of the text, from the first three chapters that focus on the criteria for a good argument, through the four major chapters on the fallacies or ways that arguments can go wrong. The emphasis is on resolving issues rather than pointing out flaws in arguments.

About the Author

T. Edward Damer received his Ph.D. from Boston University and currently teaches at Emory and Henry College.

Inside This Book (Learn More)
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index

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Customer Reviews

7 Reviews

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4.0 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Argument Karate, May 7 2003

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Patrick Roberts (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments (Paperback)

I found this book to be well written, but it is more a book of argument karate. It is written with the idea of both ends of an issue following a logic and rules. "Attacking Faulty Reasoning" is certianly thorough, however academic. I found Nicholas Capaldi's "Art of Deception" much more practical- critical thinking street fighting.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Liberal bias?, Jan 14 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments (Paperback)

To say that this is a good book except that the examples are all about conservative views and that this makes the book stilted in any way is itself logically fallacious. Bad logic is bad logic period. It is unfortunate that the conservative cause is so riddled with bad reasoning like this.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent overall, but some examples are weak, Nov 8 2002

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Roy W. Latham (Fremont, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-Free Arguments (Paperback)

This book is readable and thorough, and probably the best introduction to critical thinking around.

With such a large number of fallacies demanding multiple examples, the author must be forgiven if some of them seem a little off the mark, even while being technically correct. For example, the proposition (I'm paraphrasing) "Our baseball team was 1 and 11 this year, but with a new coach we'll do better next year." is in fact false. However, if the proposition were that "we'll probably do better" it would be true, because the probability is that we would get an average coach and an average coach has a record of 0.500, while assuming that coaching has a positive effect. Another example has former Predident Bush answering the question, "Did Dan Quayle's parents help him get into the national guard?" with words to the effect that "At least he served patrioticly and didn't run to Canada or burn the flag." The answer while technically irrelevant is a politician's way of saying, "Whether his parents helped or not is unimportant, at least ...blah, blah." Such an answer invites a rejoinder along the lines of "It really is important, because ..." The fault of the example is that it implies it is OK to rest on the technicalities even when you have a very good idea of what your opponent is really saying.

So if some of the example are a little off-base, perhaps that is all to the good as a learning experience. The small bits of uneasiness are left to the student as an exercise to resolve. The author provides the tools for doing so.

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Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars liberal biases?!?!?!
This is a good text to use as a suppliment for a Critical Thinking class. I would tend to rely more heavily upon a text that taught not only fallicious arguments, but the... Read more

Published on Dec 7 2003 by Thomas Hobbes

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book except
This book seems to cover the topic well and has been helpful. I would tend to agree with the other positive reviewers. Read more

Published on April 18 2002 by Ken Metzler