How to Win Every Argument

Author(s): Madsen Pirie

Cultural Studies

In this witty and infectious book Madsen Pirie provides a complete guide to using - and indeed abusing - logic in order to win arguments. He identifies with devastating examples all the most common fallacies popularly used in argument. We all like to think of ourselves as clear-headed and logical - but all readers will find in this book fallacies of which they themselves are guilty. The author shows you how to simultaneously strengthen your own thinking and identify the weaknesses in other people arguments. And, more mischievously, Pirie also shows how to be deliberately illogical - and get away with it. This book will make you maddeningly smart: your family, friends and opponents will all wish that you had never read it.

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Madsen Pirie is President of the Adam Smith Institute and author of numerous books including Boost Your IQ and The Sherlock Holmes IQ Book. He was formerly Distinguished Visiting Professor of Philosophy and Logic at Hillsdale College, Michigan.

Acknowledgements; Introduction; Abusive analogy; Accent; Accident; Affirming the consequent; Amphiboly; The analogical fallcy; Antiquitam, argumentum ad; Apriorism; Baculum, argumentum ad; Bifurcation; Blinding with science; The bogus dilemma; Circulus in probando; The complex question (plurium interrogationum); Composition; Concealed quantification; Conclusion which denies premises. Contradictory premises; Crumenam, argumentum ad; Cum hoc ergo propter hoc; Damining the alternatives; Definitional retreat; Denying the antecedent; Dicto simpliciter; Division; Emotional appeals; Equivocation; Every schoolboy knows; The exception that proves the rule; Exclusive premises; The existential fallacy; Ex post facto statistics; Extensional pruning; False conversion; False precision; The gambler's Fallacy; The genetic Fallacy; Half-concealed qualification; Hedging; Hominem (abusive), argumentum ad; Hominem (circumstantial), argumentum ad; Ignoratio elenchi; Illicit process; Irrelevant humour; Lapidem, argumentum ad; Lazarum, argumentum ad; Loaded words; Misericordiam, argumentum ad; Nauseam, argumentum ad; Non-anticipation; Novitam, argumentum ad; Numeram, argumentum ad; One-sided assessment; Petitio principii; Poisoning the well; Populam, argumentum ad; Positive conclusion from negative premise; Post hoc ergo propter hoc; Quaternio terminorum; The red herring; Refuting the example; Reification; Secundum quid; Shifting ground; Shifting the burden of proof; Special pleading; The straw man; Temperantiam, argumentum ad; Trivial questions; Tu quoque; Unaccepted enthymemes; The undistributed middle; Unobtainable perfection; Verecundiam, argumentum ad; Wishful thinking; Classification of fallacies; Suggested reading.

General Fields

  • : 9780826490063
  • : cipg
  • : cipg
  • : 0.304
  • : 30 March 2006
  • : 198mm X 129mm X 21mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Madsen Pirie
  • : Hardback
  • : Revised edition
  • : 160
  • : 192