Logically Fallacious: The Ultimate Collection of Over 300 Logical Fallacies (Academic Edition) (Dr. Bo's Critical Thinking Series) Kindle Edition

Everyone should have some introduction to logic. And religion/philosophy. And beer and taffy. And maybe English composition. And exercise -- do that lots. I hear that exercise is the best thing going to keep the brain healthy.On the particular book -- suits my need. Lots of stuff in there. The author is passionate about the subject. Not so easy to digest, but that goes with the subject, not the presentation of material.

This is a nearly comprehensive book of informal (and some formal) fallacies. The author writes in a lively, humorous style with many brilliant statements that reinforce the importance of critical thinking. I have read this book several times over the last year and a half, always learning valuable facts. The fallacies are listed in alphabetical order, although the fallacy of undistributed middle is out of order. Each section presents the fallacy's name, alternate names of the fallacy, a description, a logical form, and examples with explanations. The introduction, list of biases, list of types of lies, practice examples, and Q&A are very helpful. The author also presents useful information drawn from the philosophies of science, religion, and language. No book is perfect. This book contains 256 errors of punctuation, 133 grammatical errors, 17 misspellings, and 19 typos. In my opinion, this book is exceedingly valuable for anyone committed to open-minded study of logic and critical thinking. I have an MA in philosophy and have studied about 10 books on informal logic, so perhaps my opinion is worth something.

Good book, But I noticed a few errors in reasoning through out the book. To give some background on myself, I am a philosophy major at UCLA and well acquainted with methods of formal reasoning and an atheist. Although I would not consider myself an expert in logic, I have been exposed to propositional logic, predicate logic, metalogic, modal logic, and informal critical thinking. Far more exposure to logic then the author likely has received. I picked up about 4-5 big errors and a few more small errors. To give an example, one error I found lies with what he calls "The existential fallacy" (also mislabeling it as an existential instantiation which means something slightly different in formal logic). He describes the fallacy in the following form:(1) All X's are Y's(2) All Z's are X's(3) Therefore Some Z's are Y'sThe author would describe this formalization as being fallacious but he is fundamentally wrong. Although it is true All Z's are Y's is validly deduced, and we can still arrive at the 'Some' statement in (3). The phrase 'Some' in logic means 'at least one', and "All" is a subset of what the word 'some' entails. In other words, the word "some" could mean 1 object, 2 objects, a million million objects, or even all of the objects with in a specified model. Some has a very general meaning. Since the phrase "some" in some contexts could mean all, it does not show (3) to be wrong. MOREOVER, even if "some' didnt mean all, but instead only one, conclusion (3) still follows. In formal logic, it is 100% valid to instantiate from a universal to a particular. The error is going from a some to an all, not from an all to a some. The relationship between all and some only goes one way.Example:1. All caterpillars are insects that eat leaves2. All insects in my backyard are caterpillars3. (All insects in my backyard eat leaves) From 1,24. The weird looking caterpillar in my backyard with black and white stripes eats leaves From 34 can be validly deduced from 3, but 3 cannot be deduced from 4. The logical relationship only goes one way.

This book is a tremendously valuable self-improvement resource for clear thinking.I have the Kindle and iTunes versions of this book. They both operate flawlessly. A helpful feature contained in these electronic versions is the addition of hyperlinks embedded within the text which allows the reader to move to other relevant areas of interest. ​As a reader, I expect a book on logic to be organized "logically." This book passes with a five stars here. The free sample download includes the first 13 "alphabetized" fallacies which gives a good sense of the scope of the book. The author's format is: name each fallacy, describe it, represent its "logical form," give examples of the fallacy, and discuss exceptions to the rule, tips and variations. Downloading the sample will help you decide whether or not to ultimately purchase the book.Many of the examples are hysterically funny. Warning to the reader: you need to be in fairly good health to read this book, as the humor is literally gut-busting and side-splitting. The humorous examples are in and of themselves worth purchase.The often deceptive and manipulative arguments, reasoning and tactics of salesmen, talking head pundits, opinion writers and political and religious demagogues are readily seen for what they are after reading this book. Looking inwardly, I can better identify my own areas of fallacious thinking.Some of the other Amazon reviews of this book surmise that "faith-based" people will find the religious examples offensive. Perhaps. I think we all have mental blind spots no matter what religious or irreligious beliefs we hold. The author uses many examples that include "common creationist arguments". He says "let me be clear, maybe the universe is just 6000 years old. For the purpose of the book, it doesn't matter. Fallacies are not necessarily about the truth of the argument; they are more about the form of the argument."

I love the author’s style and methodical approach to each chapter. The clear and even writing style is fantastic for comprehension, if a little dry at times. The largest issue is that the chapters appear to be ordered alphabetically, and I wish that they’d gone to more effort to categorise the fallacies according to some kind of higher order. For instance, in Hackett’s text you may find chapter groupings according to, say, ‘source’, ‘cause’, ‘deduction’ and so on which may help to generalise a framework before getting stuck into the weeds. For that reason I can’t recommend this as a first text.

This book is an education in the art of reasoning. Something few of us are actually any good at. It's an wonderfully entertaining read for those of us who would like to argue or debate or for those who would like to improve their reasoning skills. And since it's written for the layperson, no specialist knowledge is required.The amount of bad logic and fallacious reasoning that's exposed in each of the over 300 examples had me transfixed. Fascinating and enlightening for those of us who are willing to learn. It's those who argue for the the supernatural that come out of this book the worst, by far. In the Introduction, the author says: ''In debating claims against the supernatural, I have found that in virtually all situations, what is trying to be passed off as a magically delicious argument, it is actually just logically fallacious - no magic involved.'' But we're all guilty at times of using logic incorrectly. Everyone of us! If you don't believe me, then read this book. You'll be surprised!

This is a novel and thought-provoking compendium of logical fallacies. It is quite well put together and gives readily understood examples of the traps people fall into. The author (non-British-English) could have spent a little more time proof-reading it though as there are several examples of incomplete sentences or poor grammar in the book which detract from its overall polish and professionalism.

This is a pretty simple to read and understand book. I'd recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn more about the many different ways people err in reasoning. From what I've seen, this is one of the more comprehensive books on fallacies. I think each fallacy is explained adequately. It's useful if you are interested in improving your reasoning ability.

A must have for anyone interested in critical thinking.