Crimes Against Logic: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and...

Crimes Against Logic: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial ... | Jamie Whyte | A brilliant book

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Crimes Against Log...

	Crimes Against Logic: Exposing the Bogus Arguments of Politicians, Priests, Journalists, and Other Serial ... Jamie Whyte McGraw-Hill, 2004 - 176 pages average customer review:based on 104 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

If only everyone in the world would read this book...

If only everyone would listen and think more clearly before making decisions based on what they hear and read! This little book should be required reading in any formal education, so that more people become aware of exactly how politicians, journalists, preachers and "other serial offenders" use bogus arguments through empty words, inconsistency, equivocation, begging the question, misusing statistics, putting a fancy dress on prejudice, etc.

So many specific examples have already been given in the other reviews that I'll add my two cents in support of this work by giving you a couple of page-long quotes, one from near the beginning, one from the end. I should think these would whet anyone's appetite. Well, maybe not a person described in the first quote...

"Does your right to your opinion oblige me to let you keep it? ... On matters like whether or not a car is about to crush them, everybody is interested in believing the truth; they will take the correction of their errors as a favor. The same goes for any other topic. If someone is interested in believing the truth, then she will not take the presentation of contrary evidence and argument as some kind of injury.

"It's just that, on some topics, many people are not really interested in believing the truth. They might prefer it if their opinion turns out to be true--that would be the icing on the cake--but truth is not too important. Most of my friends, though subscribing to no familiar religion, claim to believe in a 'superior intelligence' or 'something higher than us.' Yet they will also cheerfully admit the absence of even a shred of evidence. Never mind. There is no cost in error, because the claim is so vague that it has no implications for action (unlike the case of the oncoming car). They just like believing it, perhaps because it would be nice if it were true, or because it helps them get along with their religious parents, or for some other reason.

"But truth is not really the point, and it is most annoying to be pressed on the matter. And to register this, to make it clear that truth is neither here nor there, they declare, 'I am entitled to my opinion.' Once you hear these words, you should realize that it is simple rudeness to persist with the matter. You may be interested in whether or not their opinion is true, but take the hint, they aren't."

The second quote:

"...It becomes clear that many are more interested in displaying their concern and sincerity than in arguing cogently. Indeed, they seem to believe that genuine concern licenses irrationality. 'You can't argue with his sincerity' is the reaction they seek. And in seeking this, they resemble many of their listeners.

"The idea that you can't argue with the morally sincere, that caring licenses irrationality, is as pernicious as it is popular. It displays a lack of moral seriousness. If the matter at hand is something you genuinely care about, then you should seek more than ever to believe the truth about it. And rationality is merely that way of thinking that gives your beliefs the greatest chance of being true. To dispense with it on the ground that you care is preposterous. As the moral temperature rises, so should our devotion to the truth and hence to proper reasoning. ...

"People will hold an opinion because they want to keep the company of others who share the opinion, or because they think it is the respectable opinion, or because they have publicly expressed the opinion in the past and would be embarrassed by a 'U-turn,' or because the world would suit them better if the opinion were true, or....

"Perhaps it is better to get on with your family and friends, to avoid embarrassment, or to comfort yourself with fantasies than to believe the truth. But those who approach matters in this way should give up any pretensions to intellectual seriousness. They are not genuinely interested in reality.

"Nor are they genuinely concerned about the welfare of others. For we all live in reality, even if we might wish it otherwise. To know what is in the best interests of those you care about, you need to understand the world in which they live. If heaven does not really exist, for example, then those deprivations the religious recommend as the path to it are not really in their children's best interests. If they are seriously concerned about their children, they should be serious about the existence of heaven. And if this is true for religion, it is even more obviously true for physics, biology, economics, psychology, medicine, and everything else on which people have opinions.

"Separating intellectual from moral seriousness is harder than those who are intellectually frivolous may care to admit."

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A brilliant book

If anyone has taken a Philosophy course during undergraduate, you'll find that the hard parts are not understanding the actual concepts but: 1)Actually finding them through the bloated, rambling course texts; 2)Making it through a whole term of such essays/ articles without perishing of boredom.

This text on Philosophy manages to discuss Philosophy without any of the burden of many texts on said subject that I have read-- an accomplishment worth 5 stars in its own right.(The book can be read in a single day/ afternoon.)

Some of the good things that he talks about (withouth overwhelming the reader with detail) are:

1. Why it is not good enough to say "I have the right to my opinion" and defining what exactly a right is as well as why it is irrelevant to finding correct answers to any given topic.

2. Using syllogisms to expose the foolishness of statements that are made about certain things. One example is his analysis of: "There should be free health care for all." The author points out the logical fallacy of noting that there can't be free health care because *someone,* *somewhere* has to pay for it.

His topics are not things that a person could not think about and come to the same conclusions on-- but I believe this text is written with the understand that *most* people don't think about things past their initial, visceral impressions.

This book is very interesting and very much worth the purchase price.

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a practical introduction

This book is a guide to everyday logic fallacies and, even it's not a complete list, it's refreshing since we are so used to them: This fallacies are so common than we don't notice the reasoning error anymore. A refreshing book about intellectual honesty.

great bias bustings book!

Just finished this interesting book. This is a great book of "bias busters" for the "less intelectuals" ( i m commiting the quotation fallacy now) , the writer has tried to avoid much "jargon"( one of the fallacies mention in the book ;-)), and has taken a wider variety of fronts. I like the book very much, with a lot of resounding miss-logics. Some of the ideas are brand new, some have appeared in many publications. The writer comes from new Zealand and now live in London. There are some "disbelief of religions" line of thought inside that becomes popular nowadays. In the different perspective, debate speakers can use some of these fallacies in the debate, it is a bag of powerful weapons that one can use. (I am mindmapping this book for future reference!). A minor critic, some of the same samples are repeatedly mention across the book. All in all,it is interesting and easy to read. Happy reading!

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haven't read it, just checking out the review feature :)

haven't read it, just checking out the review feature :) gave it 3 stars since that's in the middle.Computational Finance 1999

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

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