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How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic
This is the book your friends will wish you hadn't read, a witty and infectious guide to arguing successfully. Each entry deals with one fallacy, explaining what the fallacy is, giving and analysing an example, outlining when/where/why the particular fallacy tends to occur and finally showing how you can perpetrate the fallacy on other people in order to win an argument. Originally published to great acclaim in 1985 as "The Book of Fallacy", this is a classic brought up-to-date for a whole new generation.
182 pages, Hardcover
First published March 30, 2006
351 people are currently reading
4,907 people want to read
About the author
Madsen Pirie
60 books26 followersBorn in Hull, Pirie is the son of Douglas Pirie and Eva Madsen. As a child, he attended the Humberstone Foundation School in Old Clee, Lincolnshire.
He graduated with an MA (undergraduate) in History from the University of Edinburgh (1970), with a PhD in Philosophy from the University of St Andrews (1974), and with an MPhil in Land Economy from Pembroke College, Cambridge (1997)
Before co-founding the Adam Smith Institute, Pirie worked for the United States House of Representatives. He was a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Logic and Philosophy at the private Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, USA. Pirie was one of three Britons living in the United States who founded the Adam Smith Institute.
The Adam Smith Institute is a UK-based think tank that champions the ideas of free market policy. In January 2010 Foreign Policy and the University of Pennsylvania named the Adam Smith Institute among the top 10 think tanks in the world outside of the US. The Institute is "a pioneer of privatisation" in the UK and elsewhere. It has undertaken policy initiatives aimed at replacing state controls and monopolies with opportunities for competition choice in a broad area. The ASI proposed reforms in taxation, public services, transport and local government. It published Douglas Mason's original paper advocating a poll tax or community charge as it was later called.
His work in helping to develop the Citizen's Charter led to his appointment to the British Prime Minister John Major's Advisory Panel from 1991 to 1995.
Apart from his work with the Adam Smith Institute, Pirie is an author in several fields, including philosophy, economics, and science fiction.
He graduated with an MA (undergraduate) in History from the University of Edinburgh (1970), with a PhD in Philosophy from the University of St Andrews (1974), and with an MPhil in Land Economy from Pembroke College, Cambridge (1997)
Before co-founding the Adam Smith Institute, Pirie worked for the United States House of Representatives. He was a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Logic and Philosophy at the private Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan, USA. Pirie was one of three Britons living in the United States who founded the Adam Smith Institute.
The Adam Smith Institute is a UK-based think tank that champions the ideas of free market policy. In January 2010 Foreign Policy and the University of Pennsylvania named the Adam Smith Institute among the top 10 think tanks in the world outside of the US. The Institute is "a pioneer of privatisation" in the UK and elsewhere. It has undertaken policy initiatives aimed at replacing state controls and monopolies with opportunities for competition choice in a broad area. The ASI proposed reforms in taxation, public services, transport and local government. It published Douglas Mason's original paper advocating a poll tax or community charge as it was later called.
His work in helping to develop the Citizen's Charter led to his appointment to the British Prime Minister John Major's Advisory Panel from 1991 to 1995.
Apart from his work with the Adam Smith Institute, Pirie is an author in several fields, including philosophy, economics, and science fiction.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 126 reviews
November 24, 2012
I was disappointed in this book. While I have some background in logic it’s in rather selective topics so I thought a book like this that was targeting beginners would be useful but, while not difficult, this books isn’t particularly accessible. It’s organized as an alphabetical list of the different logical fallacies one might encounter, with a short list at the end of the book sorting the already discussed fallacies into their various groups.
How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic is not poorly written, but the alphabetical listing of logical fallacies is far from the best way to introduce someone to the underpinnings of logic. Like I said, his writing isn’t bad and any individual entry is easy and enjoyable enough to read, but the bare bones organization makes retention difficult and the reoccurring structure of each entry is tiresome at best. His use of the same issues as examples for logical fallacies gets old and his persistent attempts at one line quips (hard to have more than one liners in a book like this) honestly get irritating by the end.
Additionally, while this book seems to aim at beginners, the lack of precise definitions for topics that pop up repeatedly through the different logical fallacies cause greater confusion than is necessary. If the author was dead set on having an alphabetical organization to this book the very least he could have done would have been to include an introduction explaining such concepts in advance. Also, the decision to put his list of the groups at the end, and with no real explanation as to what separates one group of fallacies from the others, perplexes me. Even a short description of the various groups with each specific entry then given within its group (as opposed to the alphabetical organization), could have made the same content in this book that much easier to understand and remember. Over all, this book is short and quick with a few good bits here and there but ultimately I’m sure you can find better and more comprehensive introductions to logic (whether your intention is for use or abuse).
How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic is not poorly written, but the alphabetical listing of logical fallacies is far from the best way to introduce someone to the underpinnings of logic. Like I said, his writing isn’t bad and any individual entry is easy and enjoyable enough to read, but the bare bones organization makes retention difficult and the reoccurring structure of each entry is tiresome at best. His use of the same issues as examples for logical fallacies gets old and his persistent attempts at one line quips (hard to have more than one liners in a book like this) honestly get irritating by the end.
Additionally, while this book seems to aim at beginners, the lack of precise definitions for topics that pop up repeatedly through the different logical fallacies cause greater confusion than is necessary. If the author was dead set on having an alphabetical organization to this book the very least he could have done would have been to include an introduction explaining such concepts in advance. Also, the decision to put his list of the groups at the end, and with no real explanation as to what separates one group of fallacies from the others, perplexes me. Even a short description of the various groups with each specific entry then given within its group (as opposed to the alphabetical organization), could have made the same content in this book that much easier to understand and remember. Over all, this book is short and quick with a few good bits here and there but ultimately I’m sure you can find better and more comprehensive introductions to logic (whether your intention is for use or abuse).
February 10, 2021
I came across this book by accident at a Barnes & Noble in Bakersfield. It looked interesting, so I picked it up. I study logic and philosophy, and teach it to homeschool kids, so I thought this might be a book that illustrates these fallacies in an entertaining way. Unfortunately, as I read through it, it seems that Pirie doesn't quite have a great handle on some of the arguments he uses as examples in this book, which frankly puts the credibility of the rest of the book in severe doubt.
Let me give an example from his section "Conclusion which denies premises" on pp. 66-68 of his book.
Pirie describes an this type of fallacy as follows: "The conclusion which denies its premises is one of the 'oh-dear-I-forgot-what-I-started-to-say" fallacies. It starts by maintaining that certain things must be true, and ends up with a conclusion which flatly contradicts them." This seems to be another way of stating that the conclusion is self-defeating because it relies on contradictory premises.
One of the examples he uses is one of the standard arguments of Christian apologetics, the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Pirie describe the argument as follows: "Everything must have a cause. That, in turn, must result from a previous cause. Since it cannot go back forever, we know that there must be an uncaused causer to start the process." The conclusion is that God exists (as the "uncaused causer"), but one of the premises in the argument is that everything has a cause, and God would be part of "everything", so God must have a cause. Nanny-nanny-boo-boo.
However, there are two glaring issues with this argument. The first is that Pirie is conflating two *separate* arguments for God's existence, the Kalam Cosmological Argument and the Contingency Argument. The second is that no Christian thinker, in the long history of Christian thinkers, has ever defended the proposition that everything must have a cause. Pirie even has the audacity to claim that Aristotle and Aquinas used this kind of argument, of course without citation so you can't check to make sure his understanding of these thinkers is correct. Now, the proposition defended by Christian thinkers, such as modern philosopher William Lane Craig, is that "Everything *that begins* to exist has a cause." This is an important different. Christians have always believed that God does not have a cause because God did not have a beginning, being uncreated and self-existent. This is the same blunder that Richard Dawkins fell into with his book The God Delusion (the one that made atheist philosopher Michael Ruse "ashamed to be an atheist"), except that Dawkins at least has the excuse that he's not a trained philosopher. Pirie doesn't have such a recourse to explain such an elementary blunder (and if it seems I'm being a bit harsh, it's only because this is such an easy to avoid falsehood yet I see it all the time from atheists who don't bother to learn about what they want to criticize).
It's also worth noting that the Big Bang had not yet been discovered by the time of Aristotle and Aquinas. To them, the universe existing forever was a valid possibility (much less valid now). So they had no idea whether or not the universe, itself, had a beginning, requiring a cause to start it. The arguments Aquinas defends will succeed even if the universe was eternal (and therefore, not having a prior cause).
So let me separate the two arguments. First, the Kalam Cosmological Argument:
P1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
P2: The universe began to exist.
C: Therefore, the universe had a cause.
Now, one can infer God from this argument, but the argument, itself, does not lead to the conclusion that God exists, only to the conclusion that the universe had a cause. Thinkers like Dr. Craig use this argument as part of a cumulative case for God's existence, since it does not lead to the existence of the Christian God on its own.
Aquinas does defend a similar argument (as does Aristotle, but I'm less familiar with his version), an Argument from Motion. I will not defend it here, because it would require a lot of space to do so, but I will give a very brief and basic treatment of the argument. The universe moves (and to Aquinas, movement was not necessarily simply locomotion, but a movement from potency to actuality). Since the universe moves, it has potentials that need to be actualized. But a potential must have something outside itself to actualize it (e.g. wood has the potential to catch fire, but something that can produce fire needs to set it on fire). This means that the universe, having potentials that need actualizing, must have something outside itself to do the actualizing. This would require something that is pure act with no potentials at all, otherwise you are left with an infinite regress, which would be impossible. This thing of pure act we call God.
The second argument is the Contingency Argument. The argument essentially states that the universe, and everything in the universe, are contingent things. Since the universe itself is contingent (e.g. we know the universe will one day die in a heat death), something that is contingent requires something outside itself for its existence, a necessary entity. This necessary entity we call God.
Again, a different argument from the one Pirie outlined in his book. Pirie tries pay lip service to "saving the argument," trying to give what he thinks would be a Christian attempt to save the argument (as I just showed, there is no need for a Christian thinker to save the argument because Christian thinkers are not as dumb as Pirie apparently thinks they are) by changing "everything has a cause" to "everything in the universe must have a cause outside itself..." then argues against that statement. Again, of course, he's wasting his time because the real statement doesn't need to be adjusted, and the one he adjusted it to is clearly a poor statement, as well (since obviously the universe is not inside the universe).
That's all I'll say about that.
There are other problems with the book, such as Pirie also not understanding the political atmosphere very well (or perhaps he only looks to the uneducated members instead of the good thinkers holding positions he disagrees with). He speaks of the "argumentum ad antiquitam and argumentum ad novitam arguments, which collectively fall under the umbrella "chronological snobbery" (argumentum ad antiquitam being that the old is better because it's old, and argument ad novitum being that the new is better because it's new). He states that the argumentum ad antiquam argument finds it home among Conservatives. This can be true, but he also fails to mention that many Conservatives make arguments for their positions. I oppose same-sex marriage, not because all cultures have traditionally rejected the concept (which is true), but because of what marriage *is*, and gender complimentarity is an essential property of marriage.
Now, he goes on to say that while Liberals use to be the home of argumentum ad novitam, curiously he argues that it now makes it home among Conservatives (which is news to me, since conservatives literally want to conserve the status quo). He states that Liberals are now looking back to the time of social reform (likely making a comparison of trying to win certain rights for homosexuals based on social reform for blacks and women). But this comparison is a false analogy, for a couple of reasons: It was conservatives, not liberals, who fought for and won rights for blacks and women (Lincoln was a Republican, and most of the civil rights pioneers, like Martin Luther King, Jr., were conservative Christians). Second, opposition to interracial marriage was based on racism but was still considered marriage, whereas opposition to same-sex marriage is not based on "homophobia" but on the fact that two people of the same sex just do not make a marriage. As Lincoln once said, you can call a dog's tail a leg, but that doesn't change the fact the dog has four legs. Calling same-sex marriage marriage does not make it so.
Unfortunately the negatives here outweigh the positives, as they don't exactly inspire confidence that this is an objective look at these fallacies. There are much better books that can teach you how to logic and reason well.
Let me give an example from his section "Conclusion which denies premises" on pp. 66-68 of his book.
Pirie describes an this type of fallacy as follows: "The conclusion which denies its premises is one of the 'oh-dear-I-forgot-what-I-started-to-say" fallacies. It starts by maintaining that certain things must be true, and ends up with a conclusion which flatly contradicts them." This seems to be another way of stating that the conclusion is self-defeating because it relies on contradictory premises.
One of the examples he uses is one of the standard arguments of Christian apologetics, the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Pirie describe the argument as follows: "Everything must have a cause. That, in turn, must result from a previous cause. Since it cannot go back forever, we know that there must be an uncaused causer to start the process." The conclusion is that God exists (as the "uncaused causer"), but one of the premises in the argument is that everything has a cause, and God would be part of "everything", so God must have a cause. Nanny-nanny-boo-boo.
However, there are two glaring issues with this argument. The first is that Pirie is conflating two *separate* arguments for God's existence, the Kalam Cosmological Argument and the Contingency Argument. The second is that no Christian thinker, in the long history of Christian thinkers, has ever defended the proposition that everything must have a cause. Pirie even has the audacity to claim that Aristotle and Aquinas used this kind of argument, of course without citation so you can't check to make sure his understanding of these thinkers is correct. Now, the proposition defended by Christian thinkers, such as modern philosopher William Lane Craig, is that "Everything *that begins* to exist has a cause." This is an important different. Christians have always believed that God does not have a cause because God did not have a beginning, being uncreated and self-existent. This is the same blunder that Richard Dawkins fell into with his book The God Delusion (the one that made atheist philosopher Michael Ruse "ashamed to be an atheist"), except that Dawkins at least has the excuse that he's not a trained philosopher. Pirie doesn't have such a recourse to explain such an elementary blunder (and if it seems I'm being a bit harsh, it's only because this is such an easy to avoid falsehood yet I see it all the time from atheists who don't bother to learn about what they want to criticize).
It's also worth noting that the Big Bang had not yet been discovered by the time of Aristotle and Aquinas. To them, the universe existing forever was a valid possibility (much less valid now). So they had no idea whether or not the universe, itself, had a beginning, requiring a cause to start it. The arguments Aquinas defends will succeed even if the universe was eternal (and therefore, not having a prior cause).
So let me separate the two arguments. First, the Kalam Cosmological Argument:
P1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
P2: The universe began to exist.
C: Therefore, the universe had a cause.
Now, one can infer God from this argument, but the argument, itself, does not lead to the conclusion that God exists, only to the conclusion that the universe had a cause. Thinkers like Dr. Craig use this argument as part of a cumulative case for God's existence, since it does not lead to the existence of the Christian God on its own.
Aquinas does defend a similar argument (as does Aristotle, but I'm less familiar with his version), an Argument from Motion. I will not defend it here, because it would require a lot of space to do so, but I will give a very brief and basic treatment of the argument. The universe moves (and to Aquinas, movement was not necessarily simply locomotion, but a movement from potency to actuality). Since the universe moves, it has potentials that need to be actualized. But a potential must have something outside itself to actualize it (e.g. wood has the potential to catch fire, but something that can produce fire needs to set it on fire). This means that the universe, having potentials that need actualizing, must have something outside itself to do the actualizing. This would require something that is pure act with no potentials at all, otherwise you are left with an infinite regress, which would be impossible. This thing of pure act we call God.
The second argument is the Contingency Argument. The argument essentially states that the universe, and everything in the universe, are contingent things. Since the universe itself is contingent (e.g. we know the universe will one day die in a heat death), something that is contingent requires something outside itself for its existence, a necessary entity. This necessary entity we call God.
Again, a different argument from the one Pirie outlined in his book. Pirie tries pay lip service to "saving the argument," trying to give what he thinks would be a Christian attempt to save the argument (as I just showed, there is no need for a Christian thinker to save the argument because Christian thinkers are not as dumb as Pirie apparently thinks they are) by changing "everything has a cause" to "everything in the universe must have a cause outside itself..." then argues against that statement. Again, of course, he's wasting his time because the real statement doesn't need to be adjusted, and the one he adjusted it to is clearly a poor statement, as well (since obviously the universe is not inside the universe).
That's all I'll say about that.
There are other problems with the book, such as Pirie also not understanding the political atmosphere very well (or perhaps he only looks to the uneducated members instead of the good thinkers holding positions he disagrees with). He speaks of the "argumentum ad antiquitam and argumentum ad novitam arguments, which collectively fall under the umbrella "chronological snobbery" (argumentum ad antiquitam being that the old is better because it's old, and argument ad novitum being that the new is better because it's new). He states that the argumentum ad antiquam argument finds it home among Conservatives. This can be true, but he also fails to mention that many Conservatives make arguments for their positions. I oppose same-sex marriage, not because all cultures have traditionally rejected the concept (which is true), but because of what marriage *is*, and gender complimentarity is an essential property of marriage.
Now, he goes on to say that while Liberals use to be the home of argumentum ad novitam, curiously he argues that it now makes it home among Conservatives (which is news to me, since conservatives literally want to conserve the status quo). He states that Liberals are now looking back to the time of social reform (likely making a comparison of trying to win certain rights for homosexuals based on social reform for blacks and women). But this comparison is a false analogy, for a couple of reasons: It was conservatives, not liberals, who fought for and won rights for blacks and women (Lincoln was a Republican, and most of the civil rights pioneers, like Martin Luther King, Jr., were conservative Christians). Second, opposition to interracial marriage was based on racism but was still considered marriage, whereas opposition to same-sex marriage is not based on "homophobia" but on the fact that two people of the same sex just do not make a marriage. As Lincoln once said, you can call a dog's tail a leg, but that doesn't change the fact the dog has four legs. Calling same-sex marriage marriage does not make it so.
Unfortunately the negatives here outweigh the positives, as they don't exactly inspire confidence that this is an objective look at these fallacies. There are much better books that can teach you how to logic and reason well.
August 18, 2016
I am planning to re-read this.
This book is basically an alphabetical list of all mainstream tricks and pitfalls skilled arguers use to get their points accros. Plenty of examples are provided throughout that make the concepts stick. But way too much info in one book; definitely will have another go.
This book is basically an alphabetical list of all mainstream tricks and pitfalls skilled arguers use to get their points accros. Plenty of examples are provided throughout that make the concepts stick. But way too much info in one book; definitely will have another go.
January 9, 2013
Very good source of information, and had some genuinely awesome insights. It was, however, a bit too dry, and often read like a highly structured textbook, which made it difficult to read for longer than 10 minutes at a time.
September 7, 2013
Montreal Freethinkers Book Club pick for this September 2013. I found it in pdf online and thought it sounded interesting. It was okay. I think I would have preferred if the fallacies were listed by category rather than alphabetically to better illustrate the subtle. difference between some of them. The examples are very good and the advice on how to use each fallacy to your advantage quite humurous. All in all though, most of the fallacies are pretty obvious and I didn't find the book particularly insightful.
January 7, 2013
The book is an A-Z of fallacies people make while putting forward arguments listed by their Latin title. Each fallacy is described with examples and things to look out for when they are being committed. Once you have read this book you'll find yourself spotting the fallacies all the time when chatting to your friends, watching TV interviews or reading opinion pieces. A worthy read and really handy for people who like to debate and argue.
March 15, 2014
One of the best technical books on logic and fallacy, I enjoyed reading this book, although most of the fallacies introduced in this book are from Western logic, but they can also be used in Eastern.
I recommend this for philosophy students, and mostly for critics writing. It helps to understand the structure of fallacious sentences and have a logical structured writing.
I recommend this for philosophy students, and mostly for critics writing. It helps to understand the structure of fallacious sentences and have a logical structured writing.
February 12, 2012
The content of the book is good. Madsen Pirie managed to explain the different fallacies commonly found in arguments do the the soundness of the logic contained. A lot of different types of logical fallacies were explained, and they were really interesting.
Madsen included witty examples, sometimes forcing us to think and smile as we understood the fallacies. Some fallacies which he explained are really technincal and quite to grasp, while others are commonly practiced in our everyday experiences. Hence, to get the most out of this book, one has to really internalize the different types of logical fallacies and practice it in our daily life.
I wish the author could have arranged the materials in the book much more clearly, topically grouped, preferably, each containing an introduction for each group. I feel it would make the materials in the book much easier to digest, rather than listing them alphabetically and jumping from one type of fallacy to another. Shortly put, there seems to be almost no flow between one fallacy and the next, making understanding the broad topic a more daunting task. There is a short illustration of the groupings of the fallacies at the end of the book, but that makes it inconvenient to refer to everytime I arrive at every fallacy.
As Maden puts it in the book, "in the hands of the wrong person, this is more of a weapon than a book," and I plan to be one of those, hehehe...
Madsen included witty examples, sometimes forcing us to think and smile as we understood the fallacies. Some fallacies which he explained are really technincal and quite to grasp, while others are commonly practiced in our everyday experiences. Hence, to get the most out of this book, one has to really internalize the different types of logical fallacies and practice it in our daily life.
I wish the author could have arranged the materials in the book much more clearly, topically grouped, preferably, each containing an introduction for each group. I feel it would make the materials in the book much easier to digest, rather than listing them alphabetically and jumping from one type of fallacy to another. Shortly put, there seems to be almost no flow between one fallacy and the next, making understanding the broad topic a more daunting task. There is a short illustration of the groupings of the fallacies at the end of the book, but that makes it inconvenient to refer to everytime I arrive at every fallacy.
As Maden puts it in the book, "in the hands of the wrong person, this is more of a weapon than a book," and I plan to be one of those, hehehe...
September 4, 2014
No, it does not reveal how to win every argument. It's just an alphabetical analysis of logical fallacies. The attempts at humor are sometimes clever, but often just come off as the author acting superior. The relationship between fallacies is almost completely neglected (such as the relationship, or difference, between "slippery slope" and "runaway train" fallacies). Some interesting stuff, but not enough justify slogging through this rather difficult read.
February 28, 2024
The back description of this book calls it "witty" and "infectious" but I wouldn't go so far to use those words. It's not a bad book, it was interesting enough for me to finish it but essentially it's a dictionary for fallacies. The were parts that were entertaining & educational. There were parts that felt tedious & repetitive. It's worth reading for the information but it's not as entertaining as it hopes to be.
May 23, 2022
I was expecting a guide on how to fight fallacies, not on how to create them. Also, as others mentioned, this book is basically a collection of them, without any logical grouping or order. It also frequently references other fallacies by name, which is impossible to find in an eBook. Links (and page numbers) would be beneficial.
February 8, 2021
The main subject we should've had in school. We would've caught on the reading and writing at some point anyway. Absolutely hilarous too. Wishing I was friends with the author. (the mitochondrion is the powerhoure of the cell)
December 27, 2019
This book is much more about how to identify different types of rhetoric than it is about winning an argument and crushing your enemies. The title is total clickbait. Would not recommend
November 13, 2022
Pirie describes an this type of fallacy as follows: "The conclusion which denies its premises is one of the 'oh-dear-I-forgot-what-I-started-to-say" fallacies. It starts by maintaining that certain things must be true, and ends up with a conclusion which flatly contradicts them." This seems to be another way of stating that the conclusion is self-defeating because it relies on contradictory premises. One of the examples he uses is one of the standard arguments of Christian apologetics, the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Pirie describe the argument as follows: "Everything must have a cause. That, in turn, must result from a previous cause. Since it cannot go back forever, we know that there must be an uncaused causer to start the process." The conclusion is that God exists (as the "uncaused causer"), but one of the premises in the argument is that everything has a cause, and God would be part of "everything", so God must have a cause. Nanny-nanny-boo-boo. However, there are two glaring issues with this argument. The first is that Pirie is conflating two
*separate* arguments for God's existence, the Kalam Cosmological Argument and the Contingency Argument. The second is that no Christian thinker, in the long history of Christian thinkers, has ever defended the proposition that everything must have a cause. Pirie even has the audacity to claim that Aristotle and Aquinas used this kind of argument, of course without citation so you can't check to make sure his understanding of these thinkers is correct. Now, the proposition defended by Christian thinkers, such as modern philosopher William Lane Craig, is that
"Everything *that begins* to exist has a cause." This is an important different. Christians have always believed that God does not have a cause because God did not have a beginning, being uncreated and self-existent.
This is the same blunder that Richard Dawkins fell into with his book The God Delusion (the one that made atheist philosopher Michael Ruse "ashamed to be an atheist"), except that Dawkins at least has the excuse that he's not a trained philosopher. Pirie doesn't have such a recourse to explain such an elementary blunder (and if it seems I'm being a bit harsh, it's only because this is such an easy to avoid falsehood yet I see it all the time from atheists who don't bother to learn about what they want to criticize. It's also worth noting that the Big Bang had not yet been discovered by the time of Aristotle and Aquinas.
To them, the universe existing forever was a valid possibility (much less valid now). So they had no idea whether or not the universe, itself, had a beginning, requiring a cause to start it. The arguments Aquinas defends will succeed even if the universe was eternal (and therefore, not having a prior cause).
So let me separate the two arguments. First, the Kalam Cosmological Argument:
P1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
P2: The universe began to exist.
C: Therefore, the universe had a cause.
Now, one can infer God from this argument, but the argument, itself, does not lead to the conclusion that God exists, only to the conclusion that the universe had a cause. Thinkers like Dr. Craig use this argument as part of a cumulative case for God's existence, since it does not lead to the existence of the Christian God on its own. Aquinas does defend a similar argument (as does Aristotle, but I'm less familiar with his version), an Argument from Motion. I will not defend it here, because it would require a lot of space to do so, but I will give a very brief and basic treatment of the argument. The universe moves (and to Aquinas, movement was not necessarily simply locomotion, but a movement from potency to actuality). Since the universe moves, it has potentials that need to be actualized. But a potential must have something outside itself to actualize it (e.g. wood has the potential to catch fire, but something that can produce fire needs to set it on fire). This means that the universe, having potentials that need actualizing, must have something outside itself to do the actualizing. This would require something that is pure act with no potentials at all, otherwise you are left with an infinite regress, which would be impossible. This thing of pure act we call God.
The second argument is the Contingency Argument.
The argument essentially states that the universe, and everything in the universe, are contingent things. Since the universe itself is contingent (e.g. we know the universe will one day die in a heat death), something that is contingent requires something outside itself for its existence, a necessary entity. This necessary entity we call God. Again, a different argument from the one Pirie outlined in his book. Pirie tries pay lip service to "saving the
argument," trying to give what he thinks would be a
Christian attempt to save the argument (as I just showed, there is no need for a Christian thinker to save the argument because Christian thinkers are not as
dumb as Pirie apparently thinks they are) by changing
"everything has a cause" to "everything in the universe must have a cause outside itself..." then argues against that statement. Again, of course, he's wasting his time
because the real statement doesn't need to be
adjusted, and the one he adjusted it to is clearly a poor
statement, as well (since obviously the universe is not inside the universe).
That's all l'Il say about that. There are other problems with the book, such as Pirie also not understanding the political atmosphere very well or perhaps he only looks to the uneducated members instead of the good thinkers holding positions he disagrees with). He speaks of the "argumentum ad antiquitam and argumentum ad novitam arguments, which collectively fall under the umbrella "chronological snobbery" (argumentum ad antiquitam being that the old is better because it's old, and argument ad novitum being that the new is better because it's new). He states that the argumentum ad antiquam argument finds it home among Conservatives. This can be true, but he also fails to mention that many Conservatives make arguments for their positions. I oppose same-sex marriage, not because all cultures have traditionally rejected the concept (which is true), but because of what marriage *is*, and gender complimentarity is an essential property of marriage. Now, he goes on to say that while Liberals use to be the home ot argumentum ad novitam, curiously he argues that it now makes it home among Conservatives (which is news to me, since conservatives literally want to conserve the status quo). He states that Liberals are now looking back to the time of social reform (likely making a comparison of trying to win certain rights for homosexuals based on social reform for blacks and women). But this comparison is a false analogy, for a couple of reasons: It was conservatives, not liberals, who fought for and won rights for blacks and women (Lincoln was a Republican, and most of the civil rights pioneers, like Martin Luther King, Jr., were conservative Christians). Second, opposition to interracial marriage was based on racism but was still considered marriage, whereas opposition to same-sex marriage is not based on "homophobia" but on the fact that two people of the same sex just do not make a marriage. As Lincoln once said, you can call a dog's tail a leg, but that doesn't change the fact the dog has four legs. Calling same-sex marriage marriage does not make it so.
Unfortunately the negatives here outweigh the positives, as they don't exactly inspire confidence that this is an objective look at these fallacies. There are much better books that can teach you how to logic and reason well
*separate* arguments for God's existence, the Kalam Cosmological Argument and the Contingency Argument. The second is that no Christian thinker, in the long history of Christian thinkers, has ever defended the proposition that everything must have a cause. Pirie even has the audacity to claim that Aristotle and Aquinas used this kind of argument, of course without citation so you can't check to make sure his understanding of these thinkers is correct. Now, the proposition defended by Christian thinkers, such as modern philosopher William Lane Craig, is that
"Everything *that begins* to exist has a cause." This is an important different. Christians have always believed that God does not have a cause because God did not have a beginning, being uncreated and self-existent.
This is the same blunder that Richard Dawkins fell into with his book The God Delusion (the one that made atheist philosopher Michael Ruse "ashamed to be an atheist"), except that Dawkins at least has the excuse that he's not a trained philosopher. Pirie doesn't have such a recourse to explain such an elementary blunder (and if it seems I'm being a bit harsh, it's only because this is such an easy to avoid falsehood yet I see it all the time from atheists who don't bother to learn about what they want to criticize. It's also worth noting that the Big Bang had not yet been discovered by the time of Aristotle and Aquinas.
To them, the universe existing forever was a valid possibility (much less valid now). So they had no idea whether or not the universe, itself, had a beginning, requiring a cause to start it. The arguments Aquinas defends will succeed even if the universe was eternal (and therefore, not having a prior cause).
So let me separate the two arguments. First, the Kalam Cosmological Argument:
P1: Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
P2: The universe began to exist.
C: Therefore, the universe had a cause.
Now, one can infer God from this argument, but the argument, itself, does not lead to the conclusion that God exists, only to the conclusion that the universe had a cause. Thinkers like Dr. Craig use this argument as part of a cumulative case for God's existence, since it does not lead to the existence of the Christian God on its own. Aquinas does defend a similar argument (as does Aristotle, but I'm less familiar with his version), an Argument from Motion. I will not defend it here, because it would require a lot of space to do so, but I will give a very brief and basic treatment of the argument. The universe moves (and to Aquinas, movement was not necessarily simply locomotion, but a movement from potency to actuality). Since the universe moves, it has potentials that need to be actualized. But a potential must have something outside itself to actualize it (e.g. wood has the potential to catch fire, but something that can produce fire needs to set it on fire). This means that the universe, having potentials that need actualizing, must have something outside itself to do the actualizing. This would require something that is pure act with no potentials at all, otherwise you are left with an infinite regress, which would be impossible. This thing of pure act we call God.
The second argument is the Contingency Argument.
The argument essentially states that the universe, and everything in the universe, are contingent things. Since the universe itself is contingent (e.g. we know the universe will one day die in a heat death), something that is contingent requires something outside itself for its existence, a necessary entity. This necessary entity we call God. Again, a different argument from the one Pirie outlined in his book. Pirie tries pay lip service to "saving the
argument," trying to give what he thinks would be a
Christian attempt to save the argument (as I just showed, there is no need for a Christian thinker to save the argument because Christian thinkers are not as
dumb as Pirie apparently thinks they are) by changing
"everything has a cause" to "everything in the universe must have a cause outside itself..." then argues against that statement. Again, of course, he's wasting his time
because the real statement doesn't need to be
adjusted, and the one he adjusted it to is clearly a poor
statement, as well (since obviously the universe is not inside the universe).
That's all l'Il say about that. There are other problems with the book, such as Pirie also not understanding the political atmosphere very well or perhaps he only looks to the uneducated members instead of the good thinkers holding positions he disagrees with). He speaks of the "argumentum ad antiquitam and argumentum ad novitam arguments, which collectively fall under the umbrella "chronological snobbery" (argumentum ad antiquitam being that the old is better because it's old, and argument ad novitum being that the new is better because it's new). He states that the argumentum ad antiquam argument finds it home among Conservatives. This can be true, but he also fails to mention that many Conservatives make arguments for their positions. I oppose same-sex marriage, not because all cultures have traditionally rejected the concept (which is true), but because of what marriage *is*, and gender complimentarity is an essential property of marriage. Now, he goes on to say that while Liberals use to be the home ot argumentum ad novitam, curiously he argues that it now makes it home among Conservatives (which is news to me, since conservatives literally want to conserve the status quo). He states that Liberals are now looking back to the time of social reform (likely making a comparison of trying to win certain rights for homosexuals based on social reform for blacks and women). But this comparison is a false analogy, for a couple of reasons: It was conservatives, not liberals, who fought for and won rights for blacks and women (Lincoln was a Republican, and most of the civil rights pioneers, like Martin Luther King, Jr., were conservative Christians). Second, opposition to interracial marriage was based on racism but was still considered marriage, whereas opposition to same-sex marriage is not based on "homophobia" but on the fact that two people of the same sex just do not make a marriage. As Lincoln once said, you can call a dog's tail a leg, but that doesn't change the fact the dog has four legs. Calling same-sex marriage marriage does not make it so.
Unfortunately the negatives here outweigh the positives, as they don't exactly inspire confidence that this is an objective look at these fallacies. There are much better books that can teach you how to logic and reason well
July 14, 2024
3.5 stars. They book has everything you need to analyse (and win) arguments, just like the title promises. Also, the author gives numerous examples to clarify the text, which makes the read more pleasurable.
However, it is like reading an encyclopedia. One subject after the other. To me, it is more like a debate textbook than something to read on a Sunday afternoon.
However, it is like reading an encyclopedia. One subject after the other. To me, it is more like a debate textbook than something to read on a Sunday afternoon.
June 20, 2019
This book gives a good description of all fallacies concerning logic. It is thorough but not at all dry. The author is good at distinguishing fine differences that might easily be confused.
The examples are also humorous and down-to-earth.
The examples are also humorous and down-to-earth.
March 4, 2019
Một số ngụy biện được liệt kê khá hay và thú vị, nhưng có một vài ngụy biện có lẽ quá lủng củng để gọi là ngụy biện
January 19, 2023
When I saw the title
How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic
by Madsen Pirie, I expected a satirical, idiotic approach to arguing, a light read to make me a jerk when dealing with other jerks. However, it is a serious book, better for philosophy students (I still remember my philosophy classes), so it did not intrigue me as much because, even so, the writer didn't do a good job of approaching the argumentative discourse with the depth it requires. It is more of describing the fallacies, at a tad too bland at that. But well, it is a simplified philosophy textbook for the uninitiated in that subject.
As the blurb says, this is the book your friends will wish you hadn't read, a witty and infectious guide to arguing successfully. Each entry deals with one fallacy, explaining what the fallacy is, giving and analysing an example, outlining when/where/why the particular fallacy tends to occur and finally showing how you can perpetrate the fallacy on other people to win an argument.
As the blurb says, this is the book your friends will wish you hadn't read, a witty and infectious guide to arguing successfully. Each entry deals with one fallacy, explaining what the fallacy is, giving and analysing an example, outlining when/where/why the particular fallacy tends to occur and finally showing how you can perpetrate the fallacy on other people to win an argument.
October 5, 2018
Do you ever feel like someone you’re arguing with is using shady tactics to coerce you into agreeing with them? Do you wish you knew how to spot their BS and/or call them out on it?
If so, this book could help.
(Also, if you’d like to get better at persuading people using shady tactics, this book is even more appropriate.)
How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic presents a list of logical fallacies that can be used to trick and deceive others, along with explanations, examples, and suggestions for using each fallacy effectively.
Personally, I was put off by Madsen Pirie’s unethical angle, but I was still able to glean some of what I wanted: a better understanding of logical fallacies, how to spot them, and how to avoid them.
The reading is a bit dry overall, but with some (British) humor sprinkled throughout. I did really enjoy one of his Shakespearean jokes, though.
If so, this book could help.
(Also, if you’d like to get better at persuading people using shady tactics, this book is even more appropriate.)
How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic presents a list of logical fallacies that can be used to trick and deceive others, along with explanations, examples, and suggestions for using each fallacy effectively.
Personally, I was put off by Madsen Pirie’s unethical angle, but I was still able to glean some of what I wanted: a better understanding of logical fallacies, how to spot them, and how to avoid them.
The reading is a bit dry overall, but with some (British) humor sprinkled throughout. I did really enjoy one of his Shakespearean jokes, though.
November 10, 2011
A great beginners guide to understanding, recognizing and (unfortunately) using some of the most common types of logical fallacies.
The book is essentially an alphabetical list of common fallacies with definitions, explanations, and examples. A generous helping of dry wit is used extensively throughout the book, injecting puns and the like into the examples, which helps to liven the relatively dry material - something I appreciated, though others may find annoying.
I found it unfortunate that the author structured the writing in a way that encourages the strategic use of the fallacies, rather than how to avoid and counter them when presented by an opponent in a debate. Although you can still take it any way you'd like, I would have liked a more encouraging message of "How to Win Every Argument [by avoiding logical fallacies]".
The book is essentially an alphabetical list of common fallacies with definitions, explanations, and examples. A generous helping of dry wit is used extensively throughout the book, injecting puns and the like into the examples, which helps to liven the relatively dry material - something I appreciated, though others may find annoying.
I found it unfortunate that the author structured the writing in a way that encourages the strategic use of the fallacies, rather than how to avoid and counter them when presented by an opponent in a debate. Although you can still take it any way you'd like, I would have liked a more encouraging message of "How to Win Every Argument [by avoiding logical fallacies]".
March 19, 2014
This book is very good. It trains you into looking for fallacies often used in arguments, and it also gives tips and tricks on how you might pull such fallacy off with flying colors. The examples and their accompanying punch line also well received: it brings enlightenment with a sense of good humor in it.
You can read it lightly, you can read it slowly to let them all seep down inside: the choice is on you. You might want to re-read it a few times though if you don't have someone to spare with.
A good fighter needs a good fight to improve himself, and so is a good debater.
As long as you don't forget: with great power comes great responsibility.
You can read it lightly, you can read it slowly to let them all seep down inside: the choice is on you. You might want to re-read it a few times though if you don't have someone to spare with.
A good fighter needs a good fight to improve himself, and so is a good debater.
As long as you don't forget: with great power comes great responsibility.
September 7, 2018
Bummer, I didn't expect a list of fallacies from the title. It felt like reading a long Wikipedia article.
The author seasons each example with some dry humor but at times it makes me wonder if he's a douchebag, like when he mentions stupidity as a cause of supporting nuclear disarment. He also seems the only one who thought the plural of cum hoc is "cum hoes".
Found interesting the ad lapidem part about boycotting speakers, which nowadays applies again to nazis on campuses, and the part about irrelevant humor. I never properly understood the strawman fallacy but as described here, it got in.
September 21, 2020
Basically all there is here is a laundry list of logical argument fallacies that are nonetheless commonly used and often accepted. Though I didn’t think much of this book, it is still helpful to be reminded of how these are used on us daily from every direction in friendly and professional conversations, advertisements, news headlines, and political speeches. Some oldies but goodies to always be on the lookout for: apriorism; false binary; motte and bailey; ad lazaram; and, of course, the strawman.
August 13, 2019
Can't quite make up its mind whether it's a basic guide to the use of logic in argument or an entirely non-serious book made to nestle between "101 uses for a dead logicians" and "Is it just me or is everything fallacious?" on the Waterstones stocking filler table at Christmas.
File under middlebrow.
File under middlebrow.
July 22, 2022
I understand why people say this doesn't give a good explanation of these fallacies. I feel like you must have at least completed an Intro to Logic course in order to grasp these fallacies, it's advertised as a book that can be gifted to a friend but I feel like the ideal target audience is actually a lot smaller than the author suggests.
December 17, 2015
Kinda book I wish I hadn't wasted my time reading !
June 9, 2017
The book is listing of different types of fallacies in Latin with brief explanation. No mention about counter arguments.
April 27, 2018
This is not what I expected. It is more a book on how to abuse logic to confuse someone enough to agree with you.
September 2, 2018
A book about making you use your mathematical skills in wrong direction.
December 10, 2018
Couldn't digest.
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