[andrewbaron]

I was a philosophy major and figured out accidentally in an academic setting that logic was one of my strong suits. After considering law, I decided I didn't want to live my day-to-life dealing with using tactics of logic and the legal system to battle against others. Of all the classes I ever took however, the most useful class for me personally was logic as it did the most to prepare me for doing business deals. Most business deals finally come down to negotiating and its good to make sure you can justify your value and easily knock down anyone who tries to undermine your value, on the spot, especially for fallacious reasons. And the more you have command of logic, the more your other qualities which are helpful for doing business deals may shine. This seems to be the case especially for those who like to design their own deals instead of take a defensive role to the another party's designs. And then comes the discussions of more in-depth terms, and logic becomes more and more useful all the way through the end of a contract. And ultimately, lawyers, who you may depend on for this part of your deal, are not usually meant to act as advisors to your business and tell you what you want to do, they are usually there just to protect you.

As others have pointed out, calling a logical fallacy card to ding an opponent may indeed often miss the point if the objective is to simply win, though I have found in doing business deals, it is logic that is most useful to protect my value and ideas, as opposed to just winning them.

So I would suggest that this is an article worth close study and that leaning about fallacies is a great way to get right at the elements involved in sound logic.

*note: this comment was not meant to be an argument, just a "subjective" comment for consideration.

[philwelch]

Really? I've found that being good at logic (and good reasoning in general) makes me a lot worse at convincing others, because my motivations for believing things depart so much from theirs.

[andrewbaron]

I guess it depends on what industry you are dealing with and on what level. When you are dealing with Hollywood, they tend to pull out ALL the tricks. Protection and savviness on business deals is a must. Its an aggressive world out there and if you are going to take your business out of doing family and friends business, you may need to be prepared for sharks. We have done contracts within many very competitive markets and it can get aggressive out there.

[philwelch]

You deal with sharks by beating them at negotiation and people skills, not by beating them at logic. Logic is a defensive weapon only--it keeps you from getting fooled, but it won't really sway others.

[andrewbaron]

Good point about "it keeps you from getting fooled". Thats a serious conclusion you make, and however you needed to get there, Im glad you were able to finally arrive at my main point. :)