Rational Episodes: Logic for the Intermittently Reasonable

by Keith Parsons

Book by Parsons, Keith M.

292 pages, Paperback

First published August 25, 2009

Reviews

[Juan Pablo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was so much better than I thought it would be. The first 6 chapters are very challenging. It goes into some basics of sentential & predicate logic, their formulas & how to do proofs. I don't think they are too difficult but they are challenging & require a lot of thinking depending on your own thought process. If you can get through those first 6 chapters, the remaining 8 go into how to navigate the sea of information we live in in this "information age" & how to evaluate this information. The chapters get better as they go on & I think will likely far exceed the expectations of the average reader who might pick up this book. It touches on Bayes Theorem, which while I don't think you need to literally apply the theorem in every situation in life, I do believe understanding how it works gives you great insight in how to evaluate claims & how much weight you should or should not personally put in them. It also can give insight into understanding how someone you may disagree with may still continue to do so despite the facts when you understand how to consider what they do or do not know. The chapters on Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE), rhetoric & spin are gems as well in regards to the constant (mis?)information we are bombarded with on a day to day basis via t.v., news, advertisements, politicians etc., It's a great book that I recommend to every, despite the challenging chapters dealing with proofs. I think anybody who reads this book would come out better for it. It could definitely allow for more cooler heads, which could possibly allow for much more fruitful discussion, debate & hopefully by extension accountability in regards to evaluating & using information