Daniel Lamont McDonald

The Language of Argument, Daniel McDonald, second edition, published 1975
After reading it through it’s obvious that this book was written to be used as a practical text book: you’re given published articles from different journals and magazines to analyze in terms of the various logical structures that make up arguments. For the most part the description and discussion of the logic of arguments are explained and studied in one chapter; but the rest of the chapters consist of the various public arguments of the articles and some questions at the end of the articles pointing the student at which of the logical structures to look for in the articles.

What makes this book worth reading, outside of maybe learning about argumentative logic, are the reprinted articles themselves: “A Behavioral Study of Obedience”, “Why Does ESP Happen?", “A Psychoanalyst’s Indictment”, “Intelligent Life Elsewhere”, “Easter Island—Land of the Bird Men”, “Why I Favor Liberalized Abortion”, “Aborted Children”, “The Myths of Homosexuality”, “Heroin, Marijuana, and LSD”, “Of Ms. And Men”, “The Watergate Affair”, “Duty, Honor Country”, “Psycho-Command Power”, “Michigan Trial Reveals FBI Plot to Frame Klansmen”, “This Thing Called Love Is Pathological”, “Teaching as a Subversive Activity”, and a few others.

If one pays attention one may learn something about ‘deduction’ vs. ‘induction’—and is likely to benefit from the last chapter which provides us the rules of writing an argument. You might even start with this last chapter and read the book afterwards. In any case, I think I’ll keep this book handy for those moments in my life when I need to write an argument. As a book it’s mildly entertaining. As a text book it could have been written in less than 30 pages. I think I paid 50¢ for this book and feel it was well worth the price.… (més)