Book Review

摘要

John Woods' Errors of Reasoning (EoR) flies in the face of logical orthodoxy^ in an astonishing number of ways. Its 550 pages make numerous claims on a great many subjects. Due to space limitations, this review will focus only on some of them. I nevertheless hope to give the general flavour of this thought-provoking book. The official core topic of EoR is the one of logical fallacies. And the core claim is a critical one: the traditional theory of fallacies is radically wrong. But the background for this bold negative statement is a sophisticated and highly revisionary philosophical view of human reasoning. Such a view, it seems to me, is the most interesting aspect of the book, its critique of traditional fallacy theory being, in a sense, but its main local application. I will begin by explaining the gist of Woods' critical claim on fallacies. I will then explore the background approach inspiring Woods' stance, which occupies, roughly, EoR's first half. Finally, I will give an example of the strategies used by Woods to substantiate the critical claim via the background view.