Reddit reviews Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric: The Use of Reason in Everyday Life
We found 3 Reddit comments about Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric: The Use of Reason in Everyday Life. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Perhaps in some it is ignorance or hatred, but for many it is simply the most basic of human psychological reactions to such atrocity: denial. This is backed up with tons of logical fallacies.
I think if we approach Holocaust deniers - or other conspiratorially minded folks with compassion to help them cope with the magnitude of their internal fears, and continually redirect their impulse to utilize flawed logic, it may be a path to improving the current state of affairs.
Formal training in logic really ought to be mandatory. This is a good place to start. Kahane's book is great resource to help educate the ignorant.
I asked the AP language and Rhetoric teacher across the hall, this is what he suggested.
Couple of books:
Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric; Kahane and Cavendar
Everyday Use; Roskelly and Joliffe
Actually, those two are the best, really, as far as short primers go.
A nice supplemental website is BYU’s rhetoric page, Sylva Rhetoricae.
Also, for some good examples, even though it doesn't have a lot in the way of definitions, you can use American Rhetoric
Edit: Sorry, just noticed the double post :(
You're going to have to do better than argument by assertion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_assertion). You can't just hand-wave and say "there was a straw-man in here somewhere".
Likewise, if you're going to disprove my straw-man call you have to provide a counter example.
If you're going to try to use formal rhetoric, you need to be a lot more rigorous. Again you really should start with this book: http://www.amazon.com/Logic-Contemporary-Rhetoric-Reason-Everyday/dp/0495804118