Having read and studied professor Damer's treatise, I find it useful to make some corrections to his third edition, not in the (fruitless) purpose of discovering flaws in a book that is intended to eradicate those flaws, but, on the contrary, with the aim that my criticisms can be used to a constructive purpose. As Bertrand Russell said in his Problems of Philosophy, "a purely negative criticism seemed to me out of place here".
I have discovered two fallacies made by professor Damer throughout the book: 1- "Since it is notoriously difficult to establish the absolute truth of any statement, it would be an impractical requirement of a good argument that its premises be true in any absolute or strict sense. If such a condition were enforced, there would obviously be very few good arguments" Following D. H. Fischer (Historian's Fallacies, Harper & Row, 1970) we could call this a "pragmatic" fallacy. What Damer suggests is that, since enforcing truth as a necessary condition of good arguments limits the spectrum of good arguments, truth must not be a necessary condition of good arguments. But a "good argument" is an argument that has certain formal characteristics; usefulness it's not relevant to determine them. Analogously, it would be mistaken to say that an inductive argument must be probable because otherwise we would be deprived of a very valuable tool. As Popper has shown (Logc of Scientific Discovery, Objective Knowledge, Conjectures and refutations, etc.) inductive arguments are always fallacious. The consequences of that fact, whether they are of a positive or of a negative nature, should not modify the original conclusion. This can also be characterized as a form of wishful thinking: since we want good arguments to be achievable, absolute truth must not account for them.
2- "If someone claims that a particular product is good or better because it is new or different, the claim is based on an implicit premise that whatever is new or different is better. You could attack that premise by pointing to an obvious counterexample to the claim, such as the fiasco experienced by Coca-Cola when it came out with the 'New Coke'." (p. 27) Argumtum ad populum (appeal to common opinion). Damer implicitly assumes that, since the "New Coke" was commercially unsuccessful, it was bad. But this -as he himself recognizes when discussing the fallacy in a later section (p. 34), is not a valid argument; public acceptance is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition to qualify something as "good".
I consider the decision of omitting Latin names to be mistaken. These names are not only aesthetically valuable, but also philosophically useful, since many of the fallacies discussed are less known by their English names than by their Latin counterparts (argumenta ad populum, ad baculum, ad verecundiam, ad misericordiam, etc). If the decision was to make the book available to an audience that might be not be familiar with Latin -a decision I can adhere to- I see no reason why these names can not be included between parenthesis, to be of use to those who know them.
These particulars apart, I find professor Damer's book a very clear and useful one, not only for his discussion of the different fallacies, but also for his overall honest and open-minded approach to rational discussion. The fact that he chooses illustrative examples where he himself is guilty of making the discussed fallacy is not only admirable, but encouraging: I consider as one of the main aims of philosophy the development of the ability to listen to what the other is saying in the course of a debate. I have seen this ability to be present in none but a few respected individuals; I presume professor Damer belongs to this latter group.
