How to Win Every Argument-Free PDF eBook

My thanks for their helpful suggestions go to Eamonn Butler and John O'Sullivan. For assistance with the preparation, I thank Tom Lees, Steve Masty, Sam Nguyen and Xander Stephenson. I also thank all those who have aided and encouraged this work, not least the publisher and editor.

How to Win Every Argument-The Use And Abuse of Logic PDF eBook Free Download

Introduction

Sound reasoning is the basis of winning at argument. Logical fallacies undermine arguments. They are a source of enduring fascination, and have been studied for at least two-and-a-half millennia. Knowledge of them is useful, both to avoid those used inadvertently by others and even to use a few with intent todeceive. The fascination and the usefulness which they impart,however, should not be allowed to conceal the pleasure which identifying them can give.

Every schoolboy knows 

You would be amazed what every schoolboy knows. Anxious to secure acquiescence in their controversial claims, disputants solemnly assure their audiences that every schoolboy knows the truth of what they are saying. The audience, not wishing to be
ignorant of matters so widely understood by children, are supposed to keep silent about their doubts. Thus complex and dubious assertions are passed off unquestioned.The tactic is fallacious. Its basic purpose is to appeal beyond the
evidence to secure acceptance. The audience is invited to assent not from conviction but out of shame and fear of being thought less knowledgeable than a mere child. The merits of the point aremeanwhile overlooked.So widely used is the tactic that the hapless youth is now encumbered with severalencyclopaedias of knowledge. There is
scarcely anything which he does not know.

The runaway train 

A runaway train takes you speeding into the distance, but unfortunately does not stop. This means that when you reach your required destination you cannot leave it, but are compelled to be taken further than you wished. The runaway-train fallacy is committed when an argument used to support a course of actionwould also support more of it. If you wish to stop at a particular point, you need an argument to do so.It might well be true that lowering a highway speed-limit from 70 mph to 60 mph would save lives. That is not a sufficient argument for choosing 60 mph, however, because lowering the speed-limit to 50 mph would save even more lives. And more still would be saved at 40 mph. 

The obvious conclusion of this runaway train is that if saving lives is the sole aim, the speed-limit should be set at the level which saves the most, and this is 0 mph.In practice the lives at risk for each proposed speed-limit have to be measured against what is achieved by the ability to travel and to transport goods rapidly. Most of our daily activities involve a degree of risk which could be reduced if we limited ouractions. In practice we trade off risks against convenience and comfort. If the case for making the speed-limit 60 mph is based solely on the lives which could be saved, the arguer will need additional reasons to stop at 60 mph before the runaway train of his own argument takes him to 50 mph, then 40 mph, andfinally crashes into the buffers when it reaches 0 mph.

Thatcher's blame 

When the round black hat first appeared it was dubbed a bowler.This was because it looked like abowl, and because it was made by the Bowler brothers. The term 'Thatcher's blame' might similarly catch on for two reasons: it was regularly used against the lady herself, and it covers all cases, just as a thatcher covers all
of a roof.In her first few years in office, Lady Thatcher was blamed for poverty and unemployment in Britain. Seamlessly this switched to blame for the culture of shameless affluence as the emerging class of yuppies flaunted their new-found wealth. She wasdeemed to be at fault in both cases.The fallacy of Thatcher's blame' is committed when blame isattached no matter what outcome ensues. The fallacy occurs because the evidence is irrelevant when the determination of guilt precedes the outcome of their actions. Indeed, the point about 'Thatcher's blame' is that it covers all the conceivable outcomes.

 

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