Attacking Faulty Reasoning

Attacking Faulty Reasoning[1] is a textbook on logical fallacies by T. Edward Damer that has been used for many years in a number of college courses on logic, critical thinking, argumentation, and philosophy. It explains 60 of the most commonly committed fallacies. Each of the fallacies is concisely defined and illustrated with several relevant examples. For each fallacy, the text gives suggestions about how to address or to "attack" the fallacy when it is encountered. The organization of the fallacies comes from the author’s own fallacy theory, which defines a fallacy as a violation of one of the five criteria of a good argument: the argument must be structurally well-formed; the premises must be relevant; the premises must be acceptable; the premises must be sufficient in number, weight, and kind; there must be an effective rebuttal of challenges to the argument. Each fallacy falls into at least one of Damer's five fallacy categories, which derive from the above criteria.

The five fallacy categories

The text also sets forth 12 principles that constitute a "Code of Conduct for Effective Discussion." This code incorporates Damer’s fallacy theory and provides a procedural and ethical standard for the development of an effective intellectual style to be used when engaging in a rational discussion of important issues.

See also

References

  1. Damer, T. Edward. Attacking faulty reasoning : a practical guide to fallacy-free arguments (7th ed.). Boston, MA: Wadsworth,Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-1-133-04998-2. Retrieved 21 Sep 2013.
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