Book Reviews / Compes rendus 185 Book Reviews Logic, Language and Argumentation in Projection of Philosophical Knowledge By Georg Brutian Annenian Library ofCalouste GulbenkianFoundation. Printed by Grafica De Coimbra, Ltd. Lisbon, 1998. 175 pages. Reviewed by Juhani Pietarinen and Juho Ritola An overview of the book Professor Brutian's latest monograph, Logie, Language and Argumentation in Projection of Philosophical Knowledge (1998) is an interesting synopsis of his long and renowned career in philosophy. The book is divided into four chapters. In the first chapter, the nature of philosophical language is investigated. The author does this by dividing the task into three different parts, of which the first is to describe the specificity of philosophical knowledge. In order to achieve such a description, the author creates interesting metaphors to illumi- nate the nature of philosophy and its place among sciences. He argues that the :-elationship between philosophy cannot be seen on one level only. The nature of philosophy is polyhedral, multiplying and multifonn (p. 19). Second, Brutian examines the possibility of meta philosophy and finds the tenn unsatisfactory. He argues that we cannot adequately separate philosophy and from metaphilosophy: both of them are activities on the same level. Whereas metabiology, for example, is not biology, but the philosophy of biology, there can no such difference between philosophy and metaphilosophy: philosophy is on a par with metaphilosophy. Third, some features of philosophy are dis- cussed. In the second chapter, the nature of logic is examined. The author con- trasts different types of logic, especially differences between oialecticallogic, as understood by Hegel, and formal logic. He argues that different types of logic do not rule out each other but should be seen as complementary. He then elucidates the nature of transformational logic, its rules and its relationship to transformational grammar.The rest of the chapter is devoted to Brutian's dis- cussion of Kurt GOdel and to an historical introduction to the thinking of David the Invincible, a famous Armenian philosopher from the 5th Century who was interested in various questions of argumentation. © Informal Logic Vol. 20, No.2 (2000): pp. 185-187. 186 Informal Logic In the third chapter, Brutian presents his views on argumentation. He first sets up the scene by examining the architectonics of argumentation, the main concepts of argumentation, and the logic of argumentation. The study contin- ues by probing deeper into the logic of argumentation and the problem of translatability of argumentation. The study is completed by examining certain specific features of argumentation. In the fourth chapter, the relationship be- tween language and our image of the world is considered. The author does this by criticizing the Sapir-Whorfhypothesis and examining the implications of Niels Bohr's idea of complementarity. Brutian on argumentation Because the third chapter, "Argumentation," is of main importance to the book and to Brutian's work as a whole, we would like to enter a little bit deeper into it. The aim of the chapter is to show that logic, while being a strong tool of human relations, is not sufficient in itself for such interaction. Therefore, logic should be modified to suit the needs of argumentation (p. 10). Brutian intends to achieve this modification within only thirty pages, which means that he does not go into technical details of his programme. Still, one would have wished to find a more extensive and clearer picture of his theory of argumentation. Lacking a detailed presentation of the theory, we wi 11 com- ment on some thoughts brought forward in Chapter 3. The chapter begins with a remark that an adequate theory of argumenta- tion can only be created if we first describe the real process of argumentation (p. 89). However, on the next page the author describes an abstract scheme of argumentation. Both empirical and theoretical studies surely have their place in the examination of argumentation, but they should be clearly separated to avoid confusion. Another distinction that is in need of clarification is the rela- tionship between context-dependence and universality. On the one hand, Brutian seems to adhere to contextualist ideas on argumentation, as the following quote seems to imply: "The modification of argumentation according to the specificity of the area can be realised in different ways" (p. 90), and later on, when explaining the nature oflogic: "The character oflogic which we can and must use in argumentation depends on the character of the field in which the argumentation is on" (p. 106). On the other hand, however, he states that argumentation "is universal mode of reasoning and logic is, in principle, one of the main components of argumentation, its very essence" (p. 91). One would have hoped for some further clarification of this subject. For example, why does argumentation have a universal character, and logic does not? Perhaps the point is that we can distinguish universal patterns (logical structures) in argumentation, although in many practical situations, for instance in political rhetorics, those patterns are not followed. r I I i i \ Book Reviews / Compes rendus 187 On page 96, the author embarks upon a discussion of the nature of argu- ments. He states that since argumentation is a kind of reasoning process, it is quite natural to think that all components of argumentation are of mental char- acter. He presents a case of spouses discussing the option of adopting a child. The wife tries to convince the husband with several arguments, without suc- cess. As the discussion continues, the door suddenly opens and their friend enters the room with a charmingly smiling child in his arms. The husband gives in to adopting a child and thus the problem is solved without words. However, Brutian remarks, this action has no mental character. He explains the situation by means of explicit arguments: the situation involves an enthymematic argument. According to the explanation, we use the thought about the object which we immediately fix in our consciousness without hav- ing enough time to express it in words. That is the reason why one may think that the object itself becomes an argument instead of its mental image. This is an extremely interesting idea, but still we are left with the question why ex- actly we should consider such cases as arguments. Do positive feelings in themselves count as arguments? In all, Brutian's book raises very interesting new questions about the na- ture of argumentation. It also introduces the reader to many basic problems of argumentation in an original way. Our main wish, as we said above, is that the important topics would have been treated in a more detailed way. Perhaps Brutian's next book will go into this. About Thinking by W. Ward Fearnside Juhani Pietarinen and Juho Ritola Department of Philosophy University of Turku Turku Finland jpietari@utuji juho.ritola@utuji Second Edition, Prentice Hall Publishers, Upper Saddle River, N.J., 1997 Reviewed by Maureen Linker W. Ward Fearnside's text, About Thinking, starts with the inscription "To Students for whom the book was written." Any dedicated teacher of informal logic can appreciate the work involved in trying to craft a good logic text with students in mind. Clearly, Fearnside wanted to make that effort but whether he has succeeded is far less obvious. The principal flaw with About Thinking ©InformalLogic Vol. 20, No.2 (2000): pp. 187-189.