Abstract

One would like to be able to say that a large part of the material in this book is so obvious as to be unnecessary. Unfortunately, this book is worthwhile precisely because one cannot. Bandman's problem may be stated as follows: By what canons and criteria does one evaluate arguments in the philosophy of education? How, in particular, do we correctly evaluate arguments about what ought to be taught? The book is thus an exercise in the "metaphilosophy" of education. In the first, polemical half of the volume the author convincingly demonstrates that numerous and typical patterns of argument employed in the philosophy of education by many authors violate some of the most basic and pervasive logical rules. The really striking thing here is that Bandman persuasively charges numerous well respected educational thinkers with informal fallacies that a freshman logic student would not commit. The constructive side of Bandman's work is a bit more dubious. Initially, he distinguishes between two senses of "argument": Sense I and Sense II. These are, respectively, a "special evaluative type of argument, which does not intend to demonstrate the conclusion, and is used in giving intellectual backing to [it]," and the usual sense of argument common to formal logic. Bandman's thesis is that arguments in Sense I are "capricious," inconclusive, and typically unsound, while educational arguments in Sense II are either unsound or irrelevant. He proposes a middle way between the horns of this dilemma by urging a third sense of "argument" as the provision of "good enough" and "cogent" reasons. At least two lines of attack on Bandman's position are available. In the first place, in dismissing the utility of Sense II arguments, he makes rather facile use of the noncognitivist view that moral statements are neither true nor false. Secondly, Bandman does not adequately spell out his Sense III notion of "argument," and the few necessary conditions that he does provide fail to clarify in what sense the premisses support the conclusion and how Sense III really differs from Sense I. Despite these criticisms, the merits of the book are many, and it deserves a wide reading by philosophers and educators alike.—H. P. K.