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Nonsense: How to Overcome It
Helping even the non-assertive to become skilled rebuttalists, Gula identifies the different guises erroneous thinking and specious arguments can assume and thoroughly explains the difference between fallacious and sound logic
- GenresPhilosophy
204 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1979
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August 29, 2021
I recommend this book to those already interested in logical reasoning, not so much to those new to the topic. Robert writes about sound reasoning in academic style, focusing on communicating rather than entertaining. The book covers various aspects of communication that we may want to be aware of, such as the detection of persuasion strategies that are not based on facts, the construction of sound and valid conclusions from a set of premises, and the ability to keep a conversation on track. Overall, an informative book.
I had a bit of trouble with some of the examples used in this book, because the author was interpreting people's intention literally, and people hardly mean what they say. Towards the middle of the book a person says, after hearing of a burglary committed by a person X, that he knew that these people (referring to X's racial group) would bring trouble. The author rightly labels that conclusion as unsound, because one example does not necessarily generalise to a population. The problem I see is that we may be assessing what that person said literally, not what he meant. People have a prior, or a bias, which is not expressed in every sentence or not expressed at all. That person may have just meant that his bias was confirmed or reinforced.
The book uses short examples like the one above to illustrate a point. That's fine. But I wished there were examples where the complexity of agreement, negotiation and persuasion, is analysed in full; examples that acknowledge the challenge of interpreting the other's point of view as close as possible to what the other person meant. Using another short example given in the book, suppose that a friend tells you - "All the people I know who are on welfare don't really want to work. Therefore, all people on welfare don't want to work." This is fallacious if you interpret the statement literally, but it is not if the argument your friend had in mind is as follows.
- The characteristics of the people I know tend to be generalisable to those of the entire population.
- One characteristic of the people I know is that they don't like to work.
- Hence the entire population doesn't like to work either.
Closing the gap between what people say and mean is briefly covered at the end of the book, as so is the art of avoiding misunderstandings and keeping the conversation on track. I would have liked to see this chapter first, though. Most examples of this book could have been enriched by a few more rounds of communication until the real intentions of the interlocutor are exposed.
I had a bit of trouble with some of the examples used in this book, because the author was interpreting people's intention literally, and people hardly mean what they say. Towards the middle of the book a person says, after hearing of a burglary committed by a person X, that he knew that these people (referring to X's racial group) would bring trouble. The author rightly labels that conclusion as unsound, because one example does not necessarily generalise to a population. The problem I see is that we may be assessing what that person said literally, not what he meant. People have a prior, or a bias, which is not expressed in every sentence or not expressed at all. That person may have just meant that his bias was confirmed or reinforced.
The book uses short examples like the one above to illustrate a point. That's fine. But I wished there were examples where the complexity of agreement, negotiation and persuasion, is analysed in full; examples that acknowledge the challenge of interpreting the other's point of view as close as possible to what the other person meant. Using another short example given in the book, suppose that a friend tells you - "All the people I know who are on welfare don't really want to work. Therefore, all people on welfare don't want to work." This is fallacious if you interpret the statement literally, but it is not if the argument your friend had in mind is as follows.
- The characteristics of the people I know tend to be generalisable to those of the entire population.
- One characteristic of the people I know is that they don't like to work.
- Hence the entire population doesn't like to work either.
Closing the gap between what people say and mean is briefly covered at the end of the book, as so is the art of avoiding misunderstandings and keeping the conversation on track. I would have liked to see this chapter first, though. Most examples of this book could have been enriched by a few more rounds of communication until the real intentions of the interlocutor are exposed.
Displaying 1 of 1 review