Friday, January 17, 2014

Rhetoric and Dialectic: Persuasion With Falseness v.s. Demonstration of Validity

Vox Day gives a good explanation of rhetoric v.s. dialectic today. We have recently seen the use of rhetoric-only as arguments for defense of the killing abbatoirs of abortion in the comments here on this blog.

There are many logic books and there are many rhetoric books. One of my favorite summaries of rhetorical devices is "The Art Of Controversy", by Arthur Schopenhauer (This same book is ffound under other titles, but they are still translations of the same work by Schopenhauer).

An excellent use of dialectic and refutation of false rhetoric is found in one of my favorite works: "Agents Under Fire: Materialism and the Rationality of Science" by Angus Menuge.

Rhetorical fallacies can also be found at fallacyfiles.org.

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