Photo (c) 2008 Simon Peckhan – Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Licence

Madsen Pirie (2006) London: Continuum International
ISBN: 0826490069

How to Win Every Argument is a tour of 79 logical fallacies. Pirie's clever examples help you recognize past fallacies that have tricked you, refute fallacies that come up, and perhaps even perpetrate them on others.

In fact, it might be fun to play fallacy scavenger hunt: pick a set of fallacies (or the entire thing!), and keep your eyes and ears open for occurrences. It might be easier to memorize a small set of definitions and rebuttal techniques than to try to identify all of the fallacies you come across. Just listening to a CBC Radio call-in section, I've come across argumentum ad misericordiam (#49), post hoc ergo propter hoc (#59), loaded words (#48), argumentum ad populum (#57), argumentum ad nauseum (#50), and unaccepted enthymemes (#75). This armchair quarterbacking doesn't mean I do any better myself in my conversations, though – but it does mean I see room for personal improvement. Might be fun to fold into our weekly routine, as we've started picking up Saturday papers so that J- has materials for her current news homework.

I'm looking forward to regularly learning from “How to Win Every Argument”, and getting better at recognizing and refuting (or using!) logical fallacies.

Contents:

1. Abusive analogy
2. Accent
3. Accident
4. Affirming the consequent
5. Amphiboly
6. Analogical fallacy
7. Antiquitam, argumentum ad
8. Apriorism
9. Baculum, argumentum ad
10. Bifurcation
11. Blinding with science
12. The bogus dilemma
13. Circulus in probando
14. The complex question (plurium interrogationum)
15. Composition
16. Concealed qualification
17. Conclusion which denies premises
18. Contradictory premises
19. Crumenam, argumentum ad
20. Cum hoc ergo propter hoc
21. Damning the alternatives
22. Definitional retreat
23. Denying the antecedent
24. Dicto simpliciter
25. Division
26. Emotional appeals
27. Equivocation
28. Every schoolboy knows
29. The exception that proves the rule
30. Exclusive premises
31. The existential fallacy
32. Ex-post-facto statistics
33. Extensional pruning
34. False conversion
35. False precision
36. The gambler's fallacy
37. The genetic fallacy
38. Half-concealed qualification
39. Hedging
40. Hominem (abusive), argumentum ad
41. Hominem (circumstantial), argumentum ad
42. Ignoratiam, argumentum ad
43. Ignoratio elenchi
44. Illicit process
45. Irrelevant humour
46. Lapidem, argumentum ad
47. Lazarum, argumentum ad
48. Loaded words
49. Misericordiam, argumentum ad
50. Nauseum, argumentum ad
51. Non-anticipation
52. Novitam, argumentum ad
53. Numeram, argumentum ad
54. One-sided assessment
55. Petitio principii
56. Poisoning the well
57. Populum, argumentum ad
58. Positive conclusion from negative premise
59. Post hoc ergo propter hoc
60. Quaternio terminorum
61. The red herring
62. Refuting the example
63. Reification
64. The runaway train
65. Secundum quid
66. Shifting ground
67. Shifing the burden of proof
68. The slippery slope
69. Special pleading
70. The straw man
71. Temperantiam, argumentum ad
72. Thatcher's blame
73. Trivial objections
74. Tu quoque
75. Unaccepted enthymemes
76. The undistributed middle
77. Unobtainable perfection
78. Verecundiam, argumentum ad
79. Wishful thinking