The Fallacy Files Bookshelf
Introduction
Title:
With Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies (Fifth Edition, St. Martin's Press, 1994)
Author: S. Morris Engel
Review:
Unfortunately, as its subtitle indicates, With Good Reason does not cover formal logical fallacies. However, it is one of the best introductions to informal ones.
For those who are new to logic, there is introductory material on arguments, the central notions of validity and soundness, and the distinction between deduction and induction. Engel also explains linguistic issues which play an important role in many informal fallacies, such as ambiguity and vagueness.
Unlike many textbooks, this one includes many "raw" examples, taken from the popular press, instead of just "cooked-up" ones. Cooked-up examples have both advantages and disadvantages: The advantages include the ease of acquiring examples—just cook them up!—as well as the fact that they can be constructed to be both obvious and unambiguous. This is good for learning the distinctions between different fallacies, and the basics of spotting fallacious arguments. The disadvantages, however, include the fact that fallacious arguments in their natural settings are much harder to spot than are the artificial examples in most textbooks. Engel's text is a step in the direction of providing practice on realistic examples.
Many of the raw examples that Engel gives are not arguments, so they are not full-fledged examples of fallacies, but boobytraps. Of course, boobytraps are fallacies waiting to happen, so they are legitimate examples, but the reader should keep this distinction in mind.
Engel divides informal fallacies into three broad categories:
- Ambiguity: Equivocation, Amphiboly, etc.
- Presumption: Begging the Question, Slippery Slope, etc.
- Relevance: Ad Hominem, Appeal to Authority, etc.
"Presumption" seems to be a "miscellaneous" category to catch the fallacies which don't easily fit into the other two categories, so this grouping shouldn't be taken too seriously.
Engel describes, and provides examples of, over thirty specific informal fallacies, including the most frequently occurring ones, and those most prominently discussed in the logical literature. If you want to learn about informal logical fallacies, this is a good place to start.
Also, by the same author:
- Fallacies and Pitfalls of Language: The Language Trap (Dover, 1994). This book covers the same material as With Good Reason, but it's not a textbook, rather it's written for the general reader.
- Analyzing Informal Fallacies (Prentice-Hall, 1980). An out-of-print collection of examples of the fallacies and boobytraps discussed in Engel's other books.
Reference
Title:
The Book of the Fallacy: A Training Manual for Intellectual Subversives (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985)
Author: Madsen Pirie
Review:
This book is the closest thing to an encyclopedia of logical fallacies to have been published, and it is a shame that it has gone out of print. There are 83 fallacies arranged in alphabetical order, and a standard classification in the back. Pirie classifies fallacies into formal and informal, then further divides informal ones into linguistic (such as Equivocation), and relevance; fallacies of relevance are subdivided into classes of Omission (Straw Man, for instance), Intrusion (Ad Baculum, among others), and Presumption (Bifurcation, for example).
In the introduction, Pirie explains:
"I take a very broad view of fallacies. Any trick of logic or language which allows a statement or a claim to be passed off as something it is not, has an admission card to the enclosure reserved for fallacies."
For this reason, some of the "fallacies" are linguistic boobytraps ("Loaded Words", for instance), or non-rational techniques of persuasion, such as "Emotional Appeals".
This is a good reference book to keep on a handy shelf, but it also makes an entertaining read. The entries are wittily written and easily understood but, given its A to Z format, it's not the best introduction to fallacies for the beginner. For that, see With Good Reason, above. Unlike Engel's book, Pirie's examples are mostly cooked-up, but there is compensation in the fact that they are memorable and amusing.
Resource:
The Book of the Fallacy is now available in an online version, thanks to the Adam Smith Institute.
Application
Title:
Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (Harper & Row, 1970)
Author: David Hackett Fischer
Review:
There are three reasons why this is a valuable book on fallacies:
- It is an extensive application of logic, especially logical fallacies, to an area of study, namely, history.
- It has the longest list of fallacies of any book I know about: 112 are listed in the index. This makes it useful as a reference book on fallacies. Because of its focus on historical reasoning, some of these fallacies are specific to history (which is one reason why there are so many!), but most can be generalized to other areas of thought.
- It is a treasure trove of real examples drawn, of course, from the works of historians.
Fischer, an historian rather than a logician, works with a broad conception of "fallacy" (which is another reason why there are so many!). As a result, some of the "fallacies" are more properly boobytraps or cognitive biases, but they are no less interesting or important for all that.
The book categorizes historical fallacies into eleven broad categories, of which the following are examples:
- Fallacies of Question-Framing: Many Questions, for example.
- Fallacies of Semantical Distortion: Ambiguity, Amphiboly, Equivocation, among others.
- Fallacies of Substantive Distraction: Includes the "ad" fallacies, such as Ad Hominem.
Of special interest are the two categories Fallacies of Causation and Fallacies of False Analogy, which give the best and most thorough treatments of mistakes in reasoning about causation, and by analogy, that I've ever read. In these two chapters, Fischer goes beyond application to make real contributions to the theory of fallacies.
In addition to being a rich reference source for fallacies and examples of them, Historians' Fallacies is intelligently written, and makes especially good reading for those interested in history. I hope that future historians and logicians will study this book carefully, with an eye to improving both fields.
Psychology
Title: How We Know What Isn't So:
The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life (Free Press, 1991)
Author: Thomas Gilovich
Quote…
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Review: Why do people commit fallacies?
Fun with Fallacies
Title:
Lexicon of Intentionally Ambiguous Recommendations (LIAR) (Meadowbrook, 1988)
Author: Robert Thornton
Review:
Logical error has serious consequences, but it is also a laughing matter. Many logical fallacies have been the basis of jokes, but the biggest laughs seem to come from the fallacies of Ambiguity. There is something about double entendres that we find funny, and tapping into this vein of comedy is the Lexicon of Intentionally Ambiguous Recommendations.
The context of this book was a spate of litigation against writers of unfavorable letters of recommendation. You may be called upon to write letters of recommendation for people of whom you disapprove. If you turn them down, they may be angry with you; and if they don't get the job, due to the lack of your letter, you may have to continue working with them. If you write an honestly negative recommendation, you risk a lawsuit. Whereas, if you write a dishonestly positive one, you will have a lie on your conscience.
LIAR shows how to write an ambiguous letter which has two interpretations:
- Favorable enough to satisfy the subject of the recommendation.
- Unfavorable, for the eyes of the prospective employer who knows how to read such double-speaking recommendations.
I don't know whether such lawsuits are still a problem, and I wouldn't recommend LIAR for its stated use even if they were. In fact, I think that this little book's purported purpose is offered with tongue in cheek. Instead of a cynical self-help book for weasels, it's a satirical collection of backhanded insults. Here are some catty Equivocations:
- For a coworker with a drinking problem:
"We generally found him loaded with work to do." (P. 30) - For an unpopular colleague:
"You won't find many people like her." (P. 35) - "I am confident that no matter what task he undertakes, he will be fired with enthusiasm." (P. 64)
And here are a few malicious Amphibolies:
- For an employee who uses drugs on the job:
"She was always high in my opinion." (P. 29) - Need a recommendation for a former Enron executive? How about:
"For the services he has rendered to our firm over the years, we find ourselves deeply indebted." (P. 45)
What I found most impressive about Thornton's book is his creativity in inventing new forms of ambiguity. For instance, there is a section devoted to ambiguous punctuation:
- The "quomma" ("questionable comma"): it might be a comma, or it might be a flyspeck.
Example: "He will never do anything ,which will disappoint you." (P. 52) - The "schizocolon": is it a comma or a semicolon?
Example: "Once he came to work; he was all business." (P. 22) - The space oddity: an ambiguously short space between letters—indicated by a "/"—so that what might be one word also might be two.
Example: "Her trademark was in/decent dealings with others." (P. 56)
There is also a section on giving ambiguous oral recommendations using homophones—words that are spelled differently, but sound the same—such as "right" and "write". For instance, the following sentence in a letter would be unambiguous, but what about in a telephone recommendation?
"The breadth of the man is overwhelming and quite obvious to those working closely with him." (P. 102)
Politicians and propagandists should stay away from this little book, which could be dangerous in the hands of someone with no sense of humor.
Acknowledgment:
The book shelves art prints are available from AllPosters.com.
