Book Review INFORMAL LOGIC XV. 1 , Winter 1993 Building Arguments by Drew E. Hinderer CHRISTOPHER W. TINDAI~E Trent University Hinderer, Drew E. (1992). Building Arguments. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Pp xii, 1-260. ISBN 0-534-16158-8. Paper. Drew Hinderer aims for a book that emphasizes the connections between rea- soning and writing, which stresses basic logical skills in combination with a sensi- tivity to rhetorical issues. It is a formula that is by and large quite successful, with the strengths of the book to be found in the attention given to the construction of written arguments. In addition to some early exercises, the last six of fifteen chapters are given over to matters involved in the successful commu- nication of one's reasoning through written argumentation. Hinderer stresses writing persuasively to one's intended audience (Ch.lO) by using appeals to reliable au- thorities (Ch.ll) and compelling analogi- cal reasoning (Ch.12). There is a chapter in which the elements of effective analysis are pulled together in a discussion of fair criticism (Ch.l3), and a chapter which concentrates upon writing effective criti- cism, including counter-proposals and judgement papers (Ch.14). The fifteenth chapter tackles controversial arguments by weighing the merits of some of the reason- ing in the Animal Rights debate on experi- mentation. Peter Singer's charge of speciesism is examined in detail, as well as the positions of two of his critics: John Krasney and Katie McCabe. The final ex- ercise then invites the student to join the debate with his or her own considered argument. Such extensive attention to writing is to be welcomed in a Critical Thinking text, especially when reasoning is so often pre- sented as separate from the contexts in which it is communicated. Hinderer pays as much attention to the process of reason- ing as he does to the product. And while the producers of arguments may not be sin- gled out as important, the consumers of ar- guments, the audiences, certainly are. Beginning in chapter two, on the recogni- tion and interpretation of arguments, audi- ence-considerations are kept in the foreground. One of the best examples of this emphasis is to be found in chapter seven, on assumptions. Here Hinderer proposes testing the reliability of one's assumptions by considering (I) whether "[t]he assumption is shared or considered uncontroversial by the audience for the ar- gument," and (2) whether "[tlhe assump- tion is either known to be true or rationally justified on the basis of the best available information and valid reasoning" (95). While Hinderer restricts his application of these conditions to hidden assumptions, readers will be able to judge their usefulness for testing general premise-acceptability. The first condition considers the specific audience at which the argument is directed-their attitudes, beliefs and cog- nitive fund. It prevents us from demanding support for premises which, while not commonly known, would be recognized by the intended audience. But the second 70 Christopher W. Tindale condition (and Hinderer insists on both tests being applied) requires that the as- sumption (or premise) conform to the strictures of good logical principles, thus avoiding the unwelcome implication that we should judge as acceptable prejudicial or illogical beliefs on the grounds that the intended audience would accept them. Other features of the first nine chapters on reasoning skills are not so well- considered, although there is no problem so great as to constitute a reason for not us- ing the text. The first few chapters, while giving much of the standard fare for argu- ment identification and composition, lack a detailed discussion of explanations and their relationships to arguments, and com- pletely eschew mention of indicator words for premises and conclusions, even though these are used in the exercise sets through- out the text. A more significant omission might be seen in the lack of any scheme for setting out argume~ts in premise and con- clusion form with, ideally, a method for di- agramming. This would be particularly useful in the early chapters, where students value having some means to organize the material with which they are working. The omission is not entirely explained by Hinderer's emphasis on constructing argu- ments, because there is still considerable attention given to analyzing others' rea- soning. The absence of some standard scheme is recalled every time an example shows up in an exercise set which does not seem to be an argument at all. In chapter four, on reliable argument forms, twelve pages are devoted to the deductive/inductive distinction. While a little more attention is given to this in a lat- er chapter on sufficiency of evidence (Ch.9), it is arguable that an adequate job just cannot be done in this short a space. Added to this, Hinderer presents the sim- ple disjunction "either p Qr q" under the heading of "dilemma" and repeatedly re- fers to it by this name, while not dealing at all with the traditional dilemma (with its conditional premises). He cites Kahane's Logic and Philosophy as the source for this (although, on my reading, Kahane retains the "disjunctive syllogism," at least in the early editions that I have consulted). Re- gardless of its origin, it is a strange usage and stands to confuse students already fa- miliar with some formal logic or who will become so at a later date. The remaining chapters that have not been mentioned are generally to be recom- mended, with the possible exception of chapter six. Chapter three is a preliminary look at the functions of language, and chapter five addresses the standard prob- lems of language with a treatment of defi- nition. Then the topic is dropped until chapter eight, when clarity of ideas and ex- pression is discussed. This indicates a point worth mentioning, though the prob- lem is easily remedied: the organization of the chapters is sometimes difficult to fath- om. Chapter three, five and eight, for ex- ample, may well have benefitted from closer proximity to each other. However, Hinderer makes no pretense to having written an integrated text that must be used in the order given, and he invites instructors to treat each chapter as separate from the others and to change the order as desired. Changing its place in the book would not strengthen the one chapter about which I have most reservations. This is the sixth chapter, on relevance. Relevance is a diffi- cult subject to treat in introductory cours- es, but it is an essential one none the less. Hinderer is to be commended for trying to present a positive treatment of relevance (along with a discussion of fallacies of ir- relevance), rather than hitting it indirectly through a treatment of irrelevance. His approach, however, never adequately separates considerations of relevance from those of truth. Relevance is presented as a relation- ship between reasons and conclusion wherein the truth of the reasons "affects" the truth of the conclusion. The nature of this "affecting" is never made clear by a test or rule of thumb. Instead, when distinguishing personal relevance from logical relevance, Hinderer advises that the latter exists "if the truth of [a] sentence af- fects the probability that the conclusion is also true" (77). Hence logical relevance is reliable, whereas personal relevance is not, since it is affected by the individual's be- liefs and attitudes. But it is important to emphasize, which Hinderer fails to do, that it is not the truth of the sentence that makes it logically relevant to a conclusion. Its truth in combination with its relevance do make for a stronger argument. But truth and relevance need to be assessed sepa- rately, otherwise there is the distinct dan- ger that something will be judged relevant because it is widely known to be true. The problem with arguing, say, that "the police should be allowed to treat male adoles- cents differently because 99% of all crimes are committed by male adolescents" is not that the premise is irrelevant to the conclu- sion, since it is relevant (if true, it actively increases the probability of the conclusion being true); the problem is that the premise fails to have any basis in fact. The premise is unacceptable, not irrelevant. Students would do better to have this distinction laid out clearly rather than be led through a dis- cussion and examples in which the two are interwoven. In the context of the entire text, such problems as I have dwelt upon are not so distractive and can be overcome. There is much else to recommend the text to those who conceive of critical thinking as Hinderer does: as an enterprise that forges Review of Hinderer 71 good reasoning skills with effective writ- ing. Hinderer's own writing is accessible, as are his many exercise sets. These are generally unattributed, and many have ob- viously been constructed by the author. I found some of the exercises too superfi- cial, but my students were far more forgiv- ing here and also reacted more positively than I did to Hinderer's somewhat sketchy treatment of some of the fallacies. Building Arguments served me well as a second-text, supplementing one that treated reasoning skills in more depth and developed a scheme for organizing argu- ments. Beyond a few of the points men- tioned here, there is nothing in Hinderer's approach which conflicts wildly with the main texts on the market, which means it could be adopted without instructors alter- ing their basic approach. They would, however, have to be prepared to give a sig- nificant amount of attention to the written application of reasoning skills. Building Arguments offers the student a straightfor- ward account of the principal elements of argument-construction and then provides a number of scenarios in which such con- structions are required. What it lacks in theoretical substance, it makes up for in practical advice and illustration. Building Arguments includes a Glossary of the terms used and an index. CHRISTOPHER W TlNDALE DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY TRENT UNIVERSITY PETERBOROUGH, ONTARIO K9J 7B8 0