12/3/21

12/3/21

In rating and reviewing what is in effect a textbook I ask, could I study this on my own and master a subject? In this case, I think the answer is yes. This is clear, readable, and includes useful and well-designed exercises to drive the lessons home. As Kelley puts in it in the introduction: "This is a book about thinking. It's a book about how to think." Mastering logic is definitely useful in promoting clear thinking, and in evaluating and shaping convincing arguments. It's useful in particular in evaluating articles and books in subjects you don't know well. You might not have the expertise to evaluate many of the factual claims, but at least you can spot faulty reasoning. I should admit up front I picked this particular book because I knew author David Kelley as both a solid in scholarship and trained academic (he was a professor at Vassar at the time this book was published) and because I knew that like me, he was an admirer of Ayn Rand. He's upfront about his debt to her in his preface. Just as for me this was an attraction, some might find this point a turn-off. Which would be a shame, because I do think this book is an objective and strong presentation on the discipline.

Part One, "Concepts and Propositions" seemed rather elementary, even simplistic to me--I had absorbed these concepts long before. But it's a strength of Kelley's pedagogy that he goes step by step starting with the fundamentals and taking nothing for granted. It's Part Two, "Arguments," Part Three, "Classical Deductive Logic" and Part Five, "Inductive Logic" I find the most useful, at least in reviewing the art of the argument. Particularly useful is the chapter on "Fallacies"--encapsulated in a list on page 133. Part Four is the most difficult and esoteric, where Kelley goes into such advanced topics as symbolic logic. The layman might find this too much information--it's not a tool kit used by many other than professional philosophers. But for what it's worth, I can't imagine a better presentation. ( )