See the Additional Resources for Topics for Critical Thinking and Writing and reading comprehension quizzes for this chapter.
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8
A Philosopher’s View: The Toulmin Model
All my ideas hold together, but I cannot elaborate them all at once.
—JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
Clarity has been said to be not enough. But perhaps it will be time to go into that when we are within measurable distance of achieving clarity on some matter.
—J. L. AUSTIN
[Philosophy is] a peculiarly stubborn effort to think clearly.
—WILLIAM JAMES
Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: Each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.
— LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
In Chapter 3, we explained the contrast between making deductive and inductive arguments, the two main methods people use to reason. Either:
we make explicit something concealed in what we already accept (deduction), or
we use what we have observed as a basis for asserting or proposing something new (induction).
These two types of reasoning share some structural features, as we also noticed. Both deductive and inductive reasoning seek to establish a thesis (or conclusion) by offering reasons for accepting the conclusion. Thus, every argument contains both a thesis and one or more supportive reasons.
After a little scrutiny, we can in fact point to several features shared by all arguments, whether deductive or inductive, good or bad. We use the vocabulary popularized by Stephen Toulmin, Richard Rieke, and Allan Janik in their book An Introduction to Reasoning (1979; second edition 1984) to explore the various elements of argument. Once these elements are understood, it is possible to analyze an argument using their approach and their vocabulary in what has come to be known as “The Toulmin Method.”
The Claim
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Every argument has a purpose, goal, or aim — namely, to establish a claim (conclusion or thesis). Suppose you are arguing in favor of equal rights for women. You might state your thesis or claim as follows:
Men and women ought to have equal rights.
A more precise formulation of the claim might be this:
Men and women ought to have equal legal rights.
A still more precise formulation might be this:
Equal legal rights for men and women ought to be protected by our Constitution.
The third version of this claim states what the controversy in the 1970s over the Equal Rights Amendment was all about. (Both houses of Congress passed it in 1972, but the number of state legislatures that needed to ratify it before the Amendment could be added to the Constitution failed to do so before Congress’s mandated deadline of June 30, 1982.)
In other words, the claim being made in an argument is the whole point of making the argument in the first place. Consequently, when you read or analyze someone else’s argument, the first questions you should ask are these:
What is the argument intended to prove or establish?
What claim is it making?
Has this claim been clearly and precisely formulated, so that it unambiguously asserts what its advocate wants it to assert?