Customer Reviews

The Uses of Argument

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Stephen Toulmin's The Uses of Argument distinguishes itself as a work of importance in three different yet related fields. As philosophy it offers a compelling critique of analytic methods for looking at arguments, showing the limitations of a philosophical system that excludes discussion of ethical and practical issues. As rhetorical theory it was, along with Perelman's New Rhetoric, to reinvigorate Aristotle's topics within philosophical and practical argument. As argumentation theory, it models and maps arguments, providing a basic vocabulary for establishing claims, in terms of "warrants," "grounds," and "backing."

Toulmin is a gifted and engaging writer. He often lays out a concept in incomplete form, though, making one wonder exactly what he meant. You have to look at other things he's written much later to see a fuller exposition of an idea that is tantalizing in its original instance. He, for example, discusses "argument field" in Uses of Argument, but provides little explication of the term. You have to read his much later Human Understanding to begin to get a fuller picture of the idea.

Toulmin has often changed directions intellectually, so his work might not universally appeal to someone interested in argument or rhetoric. Nevertheless, his knowledge and writing style make him a consistently entertaining philosophical showman, much in the tradition of Bertrand Russell. He has also written one of the best books ever about Wittgenstein.

He has made significant contributions to epistemology and the philosophy of science.

Toulmin presents a highly utilitarian approach to the construction of real arguments for real people. This is not Copi's classic formal logic text. This is applied reasoning, as timely now as when authored. [A current standard body effort to establish reasoning templates for computer software assurance cases relies heavily on Toulmin.] No syllogisms, epicheiremes, sorites. Merely a rock solid easily understood and easily and effectively applied two-part six element structure for making arguments that optimize the case. Worth every penny. A true classic.

It is a book you won't forget. Far from being boring or too technical, it is filled with examples, often funny, that help you to understand better the way our reasoning works. The classical categories are here related to our daily use of reason and the 'human face' of logic is brillantly presented.

This Toulmin work is often cited as a source of fundamentals in the literature of the emerging field of assurance case engineering (and its close relatives of safety cases and dependability cases). Any engineer beginning to work with case-based reasoning has to be curious about just what "The Uses of Argument", which after all is a 40+ year old series of philosophy essays, brings to 21st century assurance science and engineering. The book quickly (if unintentionally, at least with respect to engineering) gets right down to the business of addressing this issue.

Toulmin sets forth and elaborates his arguments regarding the differences between field invariant and field specific logic in such a way as to both illuminate and instruct on not only why the separation is necessary but also the risks of assuming that it is not, i.e., the holy grail of a universally valid abstract logic. This is a particularly important challenge in a time where the tools of business management and information technology are being applied according to a logic that assumes what works in one domain can work in another, e.g., what works in manufacturing can work in healthcare. "The Uses of Argument" makes a convincing case that such may not simply be inferred by being able to associate concepts across domains but instead be grounded in defensible objective arguments within a domain. And by so doing, Toulmin demonstrates how.