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This is an introductory guidebook to the basic principles of how to construct good arguments and how to criticeze bad ones. It is non-technical in its approach and is based on 150 key examples, each discussed and evaluated in clear, illustrative detail. Professor Walton, a leading authority in the field of informal logic, explains how errors, fallacies, and other key failures of argument occur. He shows how correct uses of argument are based on sound strategies for reasoned persuasion and critical responses. Among the many subjects covered are: forms of valid argument, relevance, appeals to emotion, personal attack, uses and abuses of expert opinion, problems in deploying statistics, loading terms, equivocation, arguments from analogy, and techniques of posing, replying to, and criticizing questions. The book will be ideally suited to courses in informal logic and in the introduction to philosophy. It will also prove valuable to studetns of pragmatics, rhetoric, and speech communication.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Argument as reasoned dialogue
• 2 Questions and answers in dialogue
• 3 Criticisms of irrelevance
• 4 Appeals to emotion
• 5 Valid arguments
• 6 Personal attack in argumentation
• 7 Appeals to authority
• 8 Inductive errors, bias, and fallacies
• 9 Natural language argumentation
• Bibliography
• Index

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CHOICE Review

A fine book on informal logic, also known as "critical thinking." In the first chapter, the author, distinguishing between logical pragmatics and logical theory, characterizes "argument" as reasoned dialogue, identifies its various components, introduces some major informal fallacies, and discusses the critical perspective. Chapter 2 deals with questions and answers in dialogue, presuppositions of questions, and the fallacies of complex question and question-begging. Chapter 3 discusses the fallacy of irrelevance; presented here are varieties of irrelevance and their criticisms. Chapter 4 is a thorough treatment of the fallacy of appeal to pity. In Chapter 5, "Semantic Theory," Walton discusses validity, consistency, and standard versions of valid argument forms. Chapters 6 and 7 deal, respectively, with the fallacies of personal attack and appeal to authority. Chapter 8 is concerned with inductive errors, biases, and fallacies. Discussed here are statistical inference, sampling procedures, insufficient and biased statistics, and six kinds of post hoc errors. In the final chapter, Walton discusses ambiguity, vagueness, equivocation and arguments from analogy. The treatment of topics throughout is thorough and meticulous; fine analytic distinctions, a large number of real life illustrations, and clear writing enhance the value of the work. This is probably the best book on critical thinking to date. Up-to-date bibliography and useful index. Highly recommended as a text for courses in informal logic--critical thinking. R. Puligandla University of Toledo