Toulmin's Rhetorical Logic: What's the Warrant for Warrants?

Abstract

Argument, on virtually any model, is a movement, from reasons claims; basic problem for argument theory lies in distinguishing, in general terms, be tween legitimate and illegitimate moves. Stephen Toulmin's distinctive account is intended be a procedural account of argument, as an alternative usual formalization of reasoning. A theory of reasoning must define a principle that allows movement; in formal logic this principle is represented by mate rial conditional.1 Toulmin claimed, in The Uses of Argument (1958), that not all argument was reducible logic. He offered an alternative material or formal conditional; he envisaged a different principle, which he called a warrant. He insisted that warrants, rather than being abstractions like conditionals, were bounded by institutional and disciplinary constraints, con textual boundaries he called fields. As Foss, Foss, and Trapp summarize, the assesses whether or not trip from grounds claim is a legitimate one (131)?within those institutional and disciplinary constraints. In a sense, Toulmin is subtly moving ninety degrees from classical tradition of logic. In classical logic, term Aristotle uses describe character of logical in syllogism, anagkhaios, is usually translated as necessary, but it might also be rendered as constrained or compulsory, in a valid syllogism reasoner needs to draw conclusion. In contrast, in a Toulmin argument, she is allowed draw conclusion. A warrant, normally, is permission do something, and that permission is conditional.2 The common use of term warrant in law is prototype: a search a home is permission search it. In many secondary texts on Toulmin's model, is called an inference license.3 Despite innovation of Toulmin's response classical logic and popularity of his model for argumentation theory, a problem still remains: Scholars are not in agreement on what a is or how identify it, either