Morris Engel With Good Reason

16-08-2021
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Editions for With Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies: (Paperback published in 1999), 031208479X (Paperback published in 1994). With Good Reason 6th Edition by Engel, S. Morris Textbook PDF Download Author: David Kowara Subject: With Good Reason 6th Edition by Engel, S. Morris Textbook PDF Download free download Keywords: With Good Reason 6th Edition by Engel, S. Morris Textbook PDF Download free download Created Date: 1/31/2015 9:30:55 AM. With good reason by S. Morris Engel, unknown edition. Aug 22, 2018 (S. Morris Engel, With Good Reason. Martin's, 1986) 'The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat, or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.' (Samuel Butler, Note Books).

With Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies is an outstanding resource for high school students for critical thinking, although the price is a bit high. It covers some of the same concepts as books such as The Fallacy Detective, but it’s better for older teens. It begins with “definitions,” but even this potentially-boring foundational information is presented with touches of humor that make it both entertaining and interesting. Each brief section is followed by a summary of key points and practice exercises. Answers to a few selected questions are at the end of each section, but parents will need to read along to be able to discuss exercise questions and figure out answers to those for which none are provided--not that difficult a task. (Parents without a background in logic will find that reading this book is time well spent!)

Among topics dealt with in the first section are arguments and nonarguments, missing components, syllogisms, truth, validity, soundness, and deductive and inductive arguments.

The next section deals with language as a medium of communication. It gets into topics such as implied and actual meanings of words, ambiguity, and vagueness. Information here will be valuable to those who want to become more skillful communicators.

The bulk of the book deals with the “fun stuff”—informal fallacies. These fallacies are divided into three general sections: fallacies of ambiguity, presumption, and relevance. Under each section we encounter the more familiar labels such as begging the question, special pleading, ad hominem attacks, mob appeal, appeals to authority, etc. There are plenty of examples and exercises plus the occasional cartoon for illustration.

With Good Reason: An Introduction To Informal Fallacies - S ...

With

S. Morris Engel With Good Reason 6th Edition

An appendix at the end titled “Writing with Clarity and Reason” explains how writing an essay is much like presenting an argument. It offers excellent ideas on structuring and presenting essays.

Morris Engel With Good ReasonWith good reason by morris engel sixth edition

With Good Reason S. Morris Engel

This book is broader in scope than The Fallacy Detective, but it is written for an adult, non-Christian audience. Nevertheless, it should be suitable for mature Christian teens.

Logic Terms Flashcards | Quizlet

  1. William Lane Craig, The Only Wise God: The Compatibility of Divine Foreknowledge and Human Freedom (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1987),Google Scholar
  2. See M. B. Ahern, The Problem of Evil (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, Ltd., 1971), p. ix.Google Scholar
  3. See Alvin Plantinga’s, Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980).Google Scholar
  4. For a helpful discussion of this doctrine see Plantinga’s Does God Have a Nature? pp. 95–110.Google Scholar
  5. For a helpful discussion of this doctrine see Plantinga’s Does God Have a Nature? pp. 95–110. Cf. P. T. Geach, Providence and Evil (Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 8f, andGoogle Scholar
  6. Anthony Kenny, The God of the Philosophers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 91f.Google Scholar
  7. W. V. Quine, Methods of Logic (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1950), p. 3.Google Scholar
  8. Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967), p. 171. In this context, Plantinga addresses the ‘omnipotence paradox’ introduced by J. L. Mackie in ‘Evil and Omnipotence,’ p. 210. The paradox is started by the question, Can God make things he cannot then control? If we say ‘Yes,’ then once he has made them he is not omnipotent. If we say ‘No,’ then we are admitting that there are things that God cannot do. Richard La Croix argues that it is a concept that is impossible to define, in ‘The Impossibility of Defining Omnipotence,’ Philosophical Studies, Vol. 32 (1977), pp. 181–190.Google Scholar
  9. See S. Morris Engel, With Good Reason (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976), p. 145.Google Scholar
  10. Richard La Croix, ‘The Impossibility of Defining Omnipotence,’ Philosophical Studies, Vol. 32 (1977), p. 183.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  11. Richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), p. 162.Google Scholar
  12. Here, I am assuming that the omniscient being is within time even though he might be eternal. A very different rendering would be required if the theist were to hold that God is omniscient and atemporally eternal. See Eleanore Stump’s and Norman Kretzmann’s article, ‘Eternity’, The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 78, No. 8 (August, 1981), pp. 429–458.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  13. This particular locution is attributed to Elizabeth Anscombe by Anthony Kenny, The God of the Philosophers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 48, n. 1. The counterexample is supplied by Norman Kretzmann.Google Scholar
  14. J. R. Lucas, The Freedom of the Will (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  15. Reformed theologians, John Murray and Ned B. Stonehouse, and apologist Cornelius Van Til argued that there is such a radical difference, challenging Gordon H. Clark on the matter of God’s incomprehensibility at his ordination examination. See Fred H. Klooster, The Incomprehensibility of God in the Orthodox Presbyterian Conflict (Franeker: T. Wever, 1951).Google Scholar
  16. Cf., John H. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987), pp. 21–40.Google Scholar
  17. George Mavrodes, ‘How Does God Know the Things He Knows,’ Divine and Human Action, Thomas Morris (ed.), Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989.Google Scholar
  18. René Descartes held to an absolute omnipotence doctrine such that God is somehow supralogical and hence can, ‘if he wants,’ nullify or set aside the canons of logic and make true a contradictory proposition or do something that would be contradictory for him to do. Actually, his position was ambiguous. His writings may be interpreted as supporting either universal or limited possibilism. The former is the view that Descartes’ ‘eternal truths,’ e.g., the truths of logic, mathematics, etc., are not necessary truths. The latter position by contrast affirms that eternal truths are necessary, but they owe their necessity to divine decree. See Alvin Plantinga’s, Does God Have a Nature? (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1980), pp. 95–110.Google Scholar
  19. Nelson Pike, ‘Divine Foreknowledge, Human Freedom and Possible Worlds,’ The Philosophical Review, Vol. 86, No. 2 (April, 1977), p. 209. In Divine Nature and Human Language (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), William Alston argues that God does not have beliefs, pp. 178–193CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  20. Linda Trinhaus Zagzebski, The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 142.Google Scholar
  21. William Lycan, ‘The Trouble with Possible Worlds,’ The Possible and the Actual, ed., Michael J. Loux (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), p. 287.Google Scholar
  22. See Peter van Inwagen’s Material Beings (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), for an interesting account of such things as trees, clouds, and puppy dogs’ tails.Google Scholar
  23. Nelson Pike, God and Timelessness (New York: Schocken, 1970), pp. 121–129, cf., Zagzebski’s The Dilemma of Freedom and Foreknowledge, pp. 43f., for other criticisms of this view of God’s eternity.Google Scholar
  24. William Hasker, ‘Response to Thomas Flint,’ Philosophical Studies, 60, (1990), p. 120. See this article for an elegant argument against middle knowledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  25. J. R. Lucas, The Future (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), p. 226.Google Scholar
  26. See Charles Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948), pp. vii, 43, 83, 94. The theist, of course, can benefit from some of Hartshorne’s insights, without buying into process theology.Google Scholar
  27. Bruce Reichenbach, ‘Evil and a Reformed View of God,’ International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 24 (1988), pp. 67–85, particularly pp. 70–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  28. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1957), I, 15, 8.Google Scholar
  29. Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity, p. 166. Cf. pp. 14f., Peter van Inwagen, An Essay on Freewill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983).Google Scholar
  30. George Botterill, ‘Falsification and the Existence of God: A Discussion of Plantinga’s Free Will Defence,’ The Philosophical Quarterly (April, 1977), Vol. 27, No. 107, pp. 114–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  31. Representing the Western tradition, Henry Mansel and Emil Brunner fall into this camp. Both held to the unknowability of God and so also its corollary the unknowability of his goodness. See Emil Brunner’s God and Man (London: SCM Press, 1936), pp. 59, 60, 76–84.Google Scholar
  32. Cf. G. Stanley Kane, ‘The Concept of Divine Goodness and the Problem of Evil,’ Religious Studies, Vol. II, No. 1 (March, 1975), 49–71. Kane includes Karl Barth, see Barth’s Church Dogmatics, II. 1, pp. 188,189; II. 2, pp. 631–636 (Edinburgh, T. & T. Clark, 1936). Barth also clearly affirms God’s knowability, see Church Dogmatics II. 2, pp 4f., 147ff., 156f., 158ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
  33. James F. Ross, Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (London: The Macmillan Company, 1969), p. 167.Google Scholar
  34. For a more detailed discussion of the concept of analogy see, James F. Ross, ‘Analogy as a Rule of Meaning for Religious Language,’ Inquiries into Medieval Philosophy, James F. Ross (editor), (Westport: Greenwood Publishing Company, 1971), pp. 35–74.Google Scholar
  35. Frederick Ferré, Language, Logic and God (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), p. 75. The terms neo-orthodox and reformed do not designate two clearly distinct groups, since some neo-orthodox theologians would be comfortable with the designation, ‘reformed.’Google Scholar