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January 21, 2007

Comments

jp

Prof. Warburton -- Any prediction as to when the third edition is due to become available? Thanks.

Nigel Warburton

I'm hoping the third edition of Thinking from A to Z will come out in June 2007...I'll post something about it on this weblog when it does.

Ophelia Benson

'There is no obligation to adopt a principle of charity'

That's good to know! I think a lot of people actually think there is. I am occasionally told (despite being the sweetest kindest person you'd want to avoid in a dark alley) that I disobeyed the principle of charity in disputing some claim or other. But there are times when what one is presented with is a claim that is woolly all the way down, and the task one sees before one is to say that the claim is thoroughly woolly. Resort to the principle of charity in such cases would seem to be a way to give woolly claims a free pass, and surely that can't be a good idea.

Ludwig Fahrbach

I enjoyed the book "Thinking from A to Z" very much, especially its clarity. For me, the main problem with it is that I cannot really use it to *look up* some specific fallacy, when I need to, e.g. for preparation of a class. One can only browse in it. The reason is that many fallacies have several names among philosophers, and some have idiosyncratic names in the book. So, one doesn't know under what name to search for it in the book. In other words, the A to Z order is not really of any use, the order might as well be random. A possible solution to the problem might be an extensive index which would include all common designations. Sorry for my bad English.

PaulE

A bit late for this edition I know but what about including material on cognitive bias? I agree completely that critical thinking is a vital skill but I think it's improved by an awareness of fallacies such as Forer effect. Perhaps just adding an entry for cognitive bias and then recommending a book such as Irrationality there would suffice?

Great book(s) by the way. I'm a big fan of you work and am an OU student myself - but on the Mathematics side though!

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