A Rulebook for Arguments | Anthony Weston | When a Full Course of Logic Isn't Possible

A Rulebook for Arguments | Anthony Weston | Concise and Precise

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A Rulebook for Arg...

	A Rulebook for Arguments Anthony Weston Hackett Pub Co Inc, 2000 - 90 pages average customer review:based on 41 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

When a Full Course of Logic Isn't Possible

The analogy of this wonderful little book to Strunk and White's "Elements of Style" is apropro. This does for reasoning what the latter did for English. It's not a complete course in logic, nor a full exposition of all the inductive fallacies, but it is sufficient for most people to get through college and life. Easy to read, no excess verbage, and straight to the point. An excellent first source and reference work. Highly recommended.

Concise and Precise

This concise introduction to critical thinking presents rules for clear thinking, valid communications, and creating and assessing persuasive arguments. Its 87 brief pages are readily accessible to high school students, and useful to anyone interested in offering correct evidence and valid reasons to support conclusions. When so much of what we read, hear, and see is intended to persuade us, or even mislead us, it is important to distinguish valid arguments from careless or manipulative ones.

If good writing is clear thinking made visible, then this book provides excellent advice for writers. As a rulebook, it begins by presenting 30 rules for clearly constructing a valid case supporting your conclusion. It then turns to applying these rules for writing argumentative essays. It also treats fallacies and includes an appendix on correct use of definitions. The author recognizes this book is only an introduction to these topics and provides a good list of further reading.

Fallacies are seductive and often go unnoticed and unchallenged. In this book, many fallacies are described alongside the rules they violate. A short chapter then names and briefly describes many types of fallacies. I would have liked to see this expanded. We have long recognized sexist and racist language and work to purge it from use. I look forward to a time when a broader set of fallacies will be routinely recognized and corrected in everyday conversation. Perhaps then it will be common to interrupt the speaker to say something like: "Excuse me, but you just used the fallacy of modus ponens by affirming the consequent. Please correct that logic error before proceeding."

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Concise, Comprehensive and Concrete

This is a great book! It leads by example as a fine exercise in making points in a concise manner, covering a topic comprehensively, and presenting concrete directions for how to write soundly. Not to mention that it is a pretty short book, making it easy to read and use as reference later on.
The only criticism is that the introduction is a bit misleading. The introduction hints towards philosophy examples in the book, yet if they are used, the philosophical content of these examples escapes entirely the reader who is focused on the validity of the logical argument. Even if the introduction is misleading in this regard, the book is not, and it delivers what it promises.

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good companion with "ask right question"

When I was in big company as a pre-sale, there was a model addressing how to simulate customer issues. Of course, it worked. However, how about other topics?

Half year before, I bought the "asking the right question". It helped me a lot to find what to believe or what to do in my professional life regarding to decision involving huge money and schedule in high-tech product development.

To be actively find out where is the issue in addition to customer-issue in my life and job, this book does provide a good approach to explore the issue I face and argue in a way which I can defense. ARQ will be the tool, too, to further screen my argument.

These two books are small and complement each other.

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Just a rule-book

This little book does a great job doing just what it is intened to do -- be a rulebook for arguments. What it is not is a full length text-book. If you want to learn deep lessons about rhetoric or logic, you might look elsewhere. But if you want a short concise book, well layed out, to use as a reference when learning argumentive or writing tools, this is for you.

The best way to think of this book is as a outline for how to write clear, persuasive arguments. It opens with a discussion of different types of arguments (example, analogy, causes). It quickly introduces them, and provides a couple of criteria for evaluating them, along with some rules for effectively giving your own argument of that type.

It then finishes with a discussion of how to compose your own argumentive essay.

This book gives short rules that you can use to become a better arguer or critical thinker. If you need more than short rules, or many examples, you might look for a longer, more thorough text. But for the size and the price, I think it hits exactly the mark for which it was aimed.

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