RoR: Forum

My freshman English course covered all of that stuff, its fairly standardised for liberal arts programs isn't it ?

Post 1

Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 9:50am

I attended engineering school in North Carolina, the buckle of the Bible belt. Liberal arts? We need no stinking liberal arts! Yee-haw!

On a more serious note, my high school English grades and college entrance exam were good enough to let me place out of freshman composition. We never covered logical fallacies in high school English. Hence, the gap in my education followed.

Post 2

Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 1:49pm

Luke-
Damn! I just checked out Amazon, and the only copy availabe for sale is $250.00.

Post 3

Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 2:41pm

Jody,

Check www.bookfinder.com. Found 41 copies available, 38 at $25 or less and three at the $250 level. Includes both the 1968 first edition and the 1979 second edition.

Post 4

Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 4:49pm

Thanks Rick. $30-$40 I'm willing to do, at the $250.00 level the author would have to give me a personal reading in my living room.

Post 5

Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 4:53pm

Shucks - I just ordered one from there for $2.50 plus shipping... so skip the biggie numbers...

Post 6

Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 7:53pm

Thanks guys. I just ordered it for $2.95.

Post 7

Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 9:35pm

Luke,

This is a great chart, including the way of categorizing errors! I have several questions: i) Is this classification scheme yours or his? ii) apparently there are several editions of this book...and in textbook type books, edition # often matters...do you know if this is 1st (1968) or 2nd (1979)? iii) I wanted to copy the chart, but it is in html...can you post it in plain ascii text without all the 'formatting' ... of course if I get a hold of the right edition of the book, presumably that would be in there?

Thanks!

Phil

(PS, this list of fallacies looks somewhat different from the standard list of Aristotelian fallacies which appear in most logic books.)

Post 8

Thursday, September 29, 2005 - 9:37pm

A way to tell (if you don't recall): 1st edition is 352 pages, 2nd edition is 530 - according to the internet.

Phil

Post 9

Friday, September 30, 2005 - 3:51am

Thanks for the charts, Luke! When I get to school, I will print them out. (It is cheaper there than at home.) Also, I found this helpful in the past.

Stephen's Guide to the Logical Fallacieshttp://www.datanation.com/fallacies/
And there is this from the Adam Smith Institute:
http://www.adamsmith.org/logicalfallacies/

Writing for Loompanics Unlimited (Sellers of Unusual Books), under the name Deborah Callahan, I reviewed this work available from Amazon.Com:

The Art of Deception: An Introduction to Critical Thinking : How to : Win an Argument, Defend a Case, Recognize a Fallacy, See Through a Deception, (Paperback)
by Nicholas Capaldi.

With all this clear thinking so readily available, it is a wonder that the world has any problems.

Post 10

Friday, September 30, 2005 - 5:12am

Guys, thanks for the positive feedback!

Phil, the definitions and examples are the author's own words. The "Controverting Objectionable Arguments" is copied verbatim from the book. The classification scheme, e.g., "Fallacies of Oversimplification," also come from the author. The remaining embellishments such as "Slick Maneuver Identification Tables" arise from my own imagination. These all come from the 1968 edition of the book, well-worn but still quite sound. As for ASCII text, try copying the tables and pasting them directly into Microsoft Notepad and that should do the trick.

Rick, thanks so much for the Bookfinder link -- very helpful!

Jody, I share your shock at the Amazon cost, so thank Rick for the cost-saving link. The high Amazon cost explains why I did not bother to add a link in the SOLO entry form.

All, I want to emphasize that the informal fallacies only constitute a small section of the overall text, though I found it the most useful. The rest discusses the philosophy of logic, symbolic logic, syllogisms, etc. It really is a rich text.

A bit of trivia: When I posted this summary to my personal page years ago, I received an e-mail the author's nephew complimenting me on it and talking fondly of his memories of "Uncle Jack," aka William Jackson Kilgore.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 9/30, 7:33am)

Post 11

Friday, September 30, 2005 - 7:53am

I find that it's outrageously expensive to buy most Objectivist and similar literature here in Australia. Apart from the bestsellers like Atlas Shrugged & The Fountainhead, it simply does not exist in the bookshops, online or offline, and it has to be ordered from overseas. Half the time, the postage is more expensive than the book itself. For example, a book might be only US$2 or $3, but the postage is US$15 or $20 and it still takes 2 or 3 weeks to get here. If anyone knows a cheaper solution to this, I would be very interested.

Post 12

Friday, September 30, 2005 - 9:10am

Well, if you like audio books, try http://www.audible.com for instant downloads.

I also suggest http://www.ebooks.com which has several of Nathaniel Branden's books available in PDF format. They base one of their world headquarters in Australia. I have written them requesting that they negotiate with the publishers of Ayn Rand's books to get them in eBooks format but have not heard back from them.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 9/30, 9:12am)

Post 13

Friday, September 30, 2005 - 9:18am

> As for ASCII text, try copying the tables and pasting them directly into Microsoft Notepad and that should do the trick. [Luke]

It worked this time! (Normally with tables..especially multirow ones, the results are misaligned, lines wrap around, etc.) I don't know if the rest of the book covers different ground than the "Objectivist standard" books on logic often recommended by Oist book services past and present - e.g., Ruby, Joseph (not really a logic book per se) and Kelley's Art of Reasoning - but your excerpt alone is so good (!) that I would suspect so and am adding this book to my already large collection of logic/ how to think/ problem solving and reasoning books.

I too just ordered it online...first edition, not second.

Post 14

Friday, September 30, 2005 - 9:23am

Jillian,

Every time I order a book online, doesn't matter whether b&n, border's, amazon, alibris, abebooks, the postage is normally more than the book if it is an old book. But the old book is less than list price of new books, plus old books so often are better than new ones on the same subject, plus the time it would take to hunt around bookstores or garage sales is many times greater than the three or even twenty bucks in postage, which is really not a lot of money for what you are getting. Sometimes, if you find a good dealer and order more than one book at a time from it (amazon links to this) you can get reduced postage. But it's usually not worth it, or you buy something you haven't really vetted first. Time is money.

Phil

PS, I realize if you are trying to build up an Objectivist library of quite a few books, this way would run into lots of money if you don't buy in all at once 'batches', as I suggested above. (Or, if it's practical and you live in a city, start a club of the like-minded and buy for the club..or in a group and circulate the books?...Just a thought.)

PPS, This is certainly a problem worth solving as it impedes the worldwide spread of Rand's ideas to countries that would have people desperately hungry for the ideas, and not just the fiction.
(Edited by Philip Coates
on 9/30, 9:29am)

Post 15

Friday, September 30, 2005 - 9:37am

Hey, Jillian, let me add two points to Phil's post:

If you want to start a SOLO Australia Local Club, let me know.
Consider purchasing the Objectivism Research CD-ROM to get all the books together in one CD -- much cheaper than buying them all in hard copy.

(Edited by Luke Setzer on 9/30, 10:41am)

Post 16

Friday, September 30, 2005 - 3:03pm

Of course there's the other alternative - move here, to the U.S. ...:-)

Post 17

Saturday, October 1, 2005 - 3:18am

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.
Luke, I think a SOLO Australia Local Club is a very good idea, but unfortunately I can't make any commitments of time at the moment as my job is really demanding. I'm an accountant working in investment banking and I'm involved in major rolling software upgrades and business process re-engineering.

Post 18

Friday, October 14, 2005 - 5:44pm