Improving Your Reasoning

by Alex C. Michalos

This book has been written for all who are interested in sound thinking, whether college students or people with no previous training in logic, very little spare time, and mild interest in learning how to distinguish good arguments from bad ones. Hopefully, it may help them learn the differences between those types of arguments that actually prove what they are supposed to prove and those that do not. The latter types are not only fallacious and deceptive, but too often extremely harmful, since they may lead to erroneous conclusions which become the basis for foolish actions that may frequently have disastrous consequences for them and for innocent bystanders as well. The book discusses syllogisms, nonsyllogisms, begging the question, circular reasoning, pseudoauthority (such as faith), irrelevant appeals (i.e. straw man, fear, wishful thinking, good intentions), confusion, faulty classification, political fallacies, and inductive fallacies.

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970