Customer Reviews

A Pragmatic Theory of Fallacy (Studies in Rhetoric and Communication)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book's premise (see pages 9-10) is that "sophistical tactics" - used as "deceptive tricks" to "get the best of an opponent" - are the only type of error in a dialogue which legitimately qualifies to be categorized as a "fallacy."

Douglas Walton's 1995 book, A PRAGMATIC THEORY OF FALLACY, provides a comprehensive analysis, completely fresh thinking, and cogent practical examples, of the 25 major "informal" fallacies, which have been known to us since the time of Aristotle. Douglas Walton also provides a completely new theory of fallacies, to update Aristotle's thinking.

In his Preface, Douglas Walton asks "What is a fallacy?" He then provides this explanation for his question: "[L]ogic textbooks exhibit little clarity or consistency in giving helpful answers to this question" - hence the urgent need to update Aristotle's thinking.

I know what Douglas Walton means in his criticism of modern logic textbooks' deficient treatment and examples of "informal" fallacies, because I have searched modern logic textbooks for further explanation of "informal" fallacies, and found these logic textbooks seriously inadequate in this regard.

Douglas Walton's A PRAGMATIC THEORY OF FALLACY focuses primarily on "informal" fallacies. I have already read this book. However, I will need time to study this comprehensive book in my attempt to digest its contents. This book is a landmark intellectual achievement, and is a major scholarly contribution to the field of "informal" logical fallacies.

This book was published in 1995. Since 1995, Douglas Walton has been an extremely prolific writer of treatises about logic that typically pertain to individual "informal" fallacies. I have obtained most of these individual treatises. However, before moving to these individual treatises about certain individual "informal" fallacies, I will first attempt to digest the 300 page overview of "informal" logical fallacies in A PRAGMATIC THEORY OF FALLACY.

Parenthetically - regarding the premise of Douglas Walton's book - I posted a "customer review" on this AMAZON.com website, of Judge Ruggero J. Aldisert's book entitled entitled LOGIC FOR LAWYERS: A GUIDE TO CLEAR LEGAL THINKING. In my "customer review," I explained my reasons for my interest in "informal" fallacies, rather than in "formal" fallacies - i.e., that "informal" fallacies are often intentionally employed as a device to deliberately deceive , rather than simply constitute innocent blunders or unintended errors in reasoning. This is the basic premise of Douglas Walton's A PRAGMATIC THEORY OF FALLACY.