Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic 8th Edition by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (PDF)

Description

The proven strengths of this argument text include the philosophy of language, analysis of arguments as they occur in ordinary language, and systematic examination of inductive arguments. The book covers statistical generalizations, statistical syllogisms, and inferences to the best explanation.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: About the Author Walter Sinnott-Armstrong is Chauncey Stillman Professor of Practical Ethics in the Department of Philosophy and the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University.Robert J. Fogelin is Professor of Philosophy and Sherman Fairchild Professor in the Humanities at Dartmouth College.

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This text furthers the tradition of philosophy professors to take complex ideas and make them more complex and obfuscated. Reading it is like revisiting my old upper-division classes and the old drowsiness returns.The lack of answers to the quizzes shows disdain for the reader, assumed to be a captive college student. If you’re reading it for knowledge, there are clearer, better books all around us. If it’s for the Coursera course, there are clearer, better books all around us. But if must have it, read on.Don’t bother to buy it, you’ll never read it more than once if that. Rent it just for the duration of the class if you really want it. Even then you’ll be getting ripped off. The prices are typical student-rip-off prices… if it weren’t a so-called “text book” it would sell for less than $20. But even if the teacher doesn’t require it, he can “suggest” it and people will buy it thinking it’ll help them get through the course. It might, but only if he quizzes specifically for it.Finally, if you really want to buy this book, I’d suggest you look for the “Concise Edition” here on Amazon. It’s the latest edition and sells for about $32, less than 1/3 the cost of the non-concise edition (the bloated, expensive edition). It has fewer bells and whistles, but has more than you’ll need.

⭐I rented this book for an online course. The formatting leaves something to be desired for the Kindle, although using the landscape tilt I was better able to read it.The course I took was taught in part by the author, so the text was relevant. However, I — like so many others — was quite disappointed that the exercises in the book offered no solutions, so it was quite difficult to see if there was adequate understanding. In fact, I often skipped the exercises after seeing that I could not check to see if my answers were correct or not.I would not buy this book for Kindle unless I was using the 8.9″ size. My 7″ screen was just too small for the formatting.

⭐If you are fond of calculating the value of a book by the number of memes you get per dollar, then this book is a good value. However, I wonder if the text hasn’t become a bit bloated after 8 editions. There is material covered lightly here that is the subject of entire separate books, yet no indication is given that a superficial treatment is being provided (for example, material from linguistics and decision theory). The material that is provided is generally described well – the explanations are clear and there are sufficient examples to fix concepts.

⭐The kindle version of this book is missing symbols for THEREFOR and OR. Minor issue for me, others may have more problems with it. Besides the improper rendering issue, I felt the book was somewhat shallow and topics were not described very well. The book also does not contain any form of answer key. So you get a lot of questions/problems to work, which is nice, but there are zero answers for them. Also they do not tie everything directly back into understanding arguments. By this I mean taking an op-ed or related material and deconstructing it using everything learned. The only time this is somewhat done is within the first three chapters before learning about deductive and inductive logic.

⭐I havn’t yet read it but my husband has and says it is a very good treatment of logic issues, using a number of real world examples. It’s the text for a Coursera course that I thought I would do but havn’t had time for. He is quite skilled in mathematical logic, so is a good judge of this sort of thing.

⭐Not only is formal logic a little difficult for anyone who is unfamiliar, I felt as though this book was a bit round-about in it’s approach. One glaring problem: if you are trying to/required to learn about Truth tables, this book was awful with their explanations of how those work. The rest of the book was pretty decent, but their approach to teaching Truth Tables is ghastly.

⭐This textbook and video course (on Coursera.org) have been quite informative and mentally stimulating. I had never considered carefully “dissecting” an argument to assess its validity. Neither had I realized the whole point of the exercise was to make a person’s argument look its best, not worst! Thus far, the textbook and course have shown me how to excise unnecessary verbiage, red herrings, tangents and the like, until the conclusion is exposed as valid or invalid.

⭐I got this as a rental and all the pages are written on, and its tearing apart. The information in it is very useful though.

⭐Walter Sinnott-Armstong’s Coursera Mooc is a revelation of inventive, skilled and very enjoyable of a subject seen as dull. This book is a recommended companion to the online course and an excellent book in its own right,

⭐Very good book

⭐Ich hatte mir das Buch zum Selbststudium gekauft. Ich habe zwar viel mit philosophischer Ethik zu tun habe aber selber nicht Philosophie studiert.Vor diesem Hintergrund kan ich das Buch nur beschränkt empfehlen, ich bin schon bei den ersten begrifflichen Unterscheidungen lange dran gesessen. Eben wohl ein echtes Studienbuch.

⭐

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