Stephen Toulmin | |
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| Born | Stephen Edelston Toulmin 25 March 1922 London, England |
| Died | 4 December 2009 (aged 87) Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
| Education | |
| Alma mater | King's College, Cambridge |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Analytic |
| Main interests | Meta-philosophy,argumentation, ethics,rhetoric,modernity |
| Notable ideas | Toulmin model (Toulmin method) Good reasons approach |
Stephen Edelston Toulmin (/ˈtuːlmɪn/; 25 March 1922 – 4 December 2009) was a British philosopher, author, and educator. Influenced byLudwig Wittgenstein, Toulmin devoted his works to the analysis ofmoral reasoning. Throughout his writings, he sought to developpractical arguments which can be used effectively in evaluating the ethics behindmoral issues. His works were later found useful in the field ofrhetoric for analyzing rhetorical arguments. TheToulmin model of argumentation, a diagram containing six interrelated components used for analyzingarguments, and published in his 1958 bookThe Uses of Argument, was considered his most influential work, particularly in the field of rhetoric and communication, and incomputer science.
Stephen Toulmin was born in London, UK, on 25 March 1922 to Geoffrey Edelson Toulmin and Doris Holman Toulmin.[1] He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree fromKing's College, Cambridge, in 1943, where he was aCambridge Apostle. Soon after, Toulmin was hired by theMinistry of Aircraft Production as a junior scientific officer, first at the Malvern Radar Research and Development Station and later at the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Germany. At the end ofWorld War II, he returned to England to earn a Master of Arts degree in 1947 and a PhD in philosophy fromCambridge University, subsequently publishing his dissertation asAn Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (1950). While at Cambridge, Toulmin came into contact with the Austrian philosopherLudwig Wittgenstein, whose examination of the relationship between the uses and themeanings oflanguage shaped much of Toulmin's own work.
After graduating from Cambridge, he was appointed University Lecturer inPhilosophy of Science atOxford University from 1949 to 1954, during which period he wrote a second book,The Philosophy of Science: an Introduction (1953). Soon after, he was appointed to the position of Visiting Professor of History and Philosophy of Science atMelbourne University in Australia from 1954 to 1955, after which he returned to England, and served as Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy at theUniversity of Leeds from 1955 to 1959. While at Leeds, he published one of his most influential books in the field of rhetoric,The Uses of Argument (1958), which investigated the flaws of traditionallogic. Although it was poorly received in England and satirized as "Toulmin's anti-logic book" by Toulmin's fellow philosophers at Leeds, the book was applauded by the rhetoricians in the United States, where Toulmin served as a visiting professor atNew York,Stanford, andColumbia Universities in 1959.[2] While in the States, Wayne Brockriede and Douglas Ehninger introduced Toulmin's work to communication scholars, as they recognized that his work provided a good structural model useful for the analysis and criticism of rhetorical arguments. In 1960, Toulmin returned to London to hold the position of director of the Unit forHistory of Ideas of theNuffield Foundation.
In 1965, Toulmin returned to the United States, where he held positions at various universities. In 1967, Toulmin served as literary executor for close friendN.R. Hanson, helping in the posthumous publication of several volumes. While at theUniversity of California, Santa Cruz, Toulmin publishedHuman Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (1972), which examines the causes and the processes ofconceptual change. In this book, Toulmin uses a novel comparison between conceptual change andCharles Darwin's model ofbiological evolution to analyse the process of conceptual change as an evolutionary process. The book confronts major philosophical questions as well.[3] In 1973, while a professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, he collaborated withAllan Janik, a philosophy professor atLa Salle University, on the bookWittgenstein's Vienna, which advanced a thesis that underscores the significance of history to human reasoning: Contrary to philosophers who believe the absolute truth advocated inPlato's idealizedformal logic, Toulmin argues that truth can be a relative quality, dependent on historical and cultural contexts (what other authors have termed "conceptual schemata").
From 1975 to 1978, he worked with the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research, established by theUnited States Congress. During this time, he collaborated with Albert R. Jonsen to writeThe Abuse ofCasuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (1988), which demonstrates the procedures for resolving moral cases. One of his most recent works,Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (1990), written while Toulmin held the position of the Avalon Foundation Professor of theHumanities atNorthwestern University, specifically criticizes the practical use and the thinningmorality underlying modern science.
Toulmin held distinguished professorships at a number of different universities, includingColumbia,Dartmouth College,Michigan State,Northwestern,Stanford, theUniversity of Chicago, and theUniversity of Southern California School of International Relations.
In 1997 theNational Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) selected Toulmin for theJefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in thehumanities.[4][5] His lecture, "A Dissenter's Story" (alternatively entitled "A Dissenter's Life"), discussed the roots ofmodernity inrationalism andhumanism, the "contrast of the reasonable and the rational", and warned of the "abstractions that may still tempt us back into the dogmatism, chauvinism and sectarianism our needs have outgrown".[6] The NEH report of the speech further quoted Toulmin on the need to "make the technical and the humanistic strands in modern thought work together more effectively than they have in the past".[7]
On 2 March 2006 Toulmin received theAustrian Decoration for Science and Art.[8]
He was married four times, once toJune Goodfield,[9] with whom he collaborated on a series of books on thehistory of science. His children are Greg, of McLean, Va., Polly Macinnes of Skye, Scotland,Camilla Toulmin in the UK and Matthew Toulmin of Melbourne, Australia.
On 4 December 2009 Toulmin died of a heart failure at the age of 87 in Los Angeles, California.[10]
Throughout many of his works, Toulmin pointed out thatabsolutism (represented by theoretical or analytic arguments) has limited practical value. Absolutism is derived fromPlato's idealizedformal logic, which advocates universal truth; accordingly, absolutists believe that moral issues can be resolved by adhering to a standard set of moral principles, regardless of context. By contrast, Toulmin contends that many of these so-called standard principles are irrelevant to real situations encountered by human beings in daily life.
To develop his contention, Toulmin introduced the concept of argument fields. InThe Uses of Argument (1958), Toulmin claims that some aspects of arguments vary from field to field, and are hence called "field-dependent", while other aspects of argument are the same throughout all fields, and are hence called "field-invariant". The flaw of absolutism, Toulmin believes, lies in its unawareness of the field-dependent aspect of argument; absolutism assumes that all aspects of argument are field invariant.
InHuman Understanding (1972), Toulmin suggests that anthropologists have been tempted to side with relativists because they have noticed the influence of cultural variations on rational arguments. In other words, the anthropologist or relativist overemphasizes the importance of the "field-dependent" aspect of arguments, and neglects or is unaware of the "field-invariant" elements. In order to provide solutions to the problems of absolutism and relativism, Toulmin attempts throughout his work to develop standards that are neither absolutist nor relativist for assessing the worth of ideas.
InCosmopolis (1990), he traces philosophers' "quest for certainty" back toRené Descartes andThomas Hobbes, and laudsJohn Dewey, Wittgenstein,Martin Heidegger, andRichard Rorty for abandoning that tradition.
InCosmopolis Toulmin seeks the origins of the modern emphasis on universality (philosophers' "quest for certainty"), and criticizes both modern science and philosophers for having ignored practical issues in preference for abstract andtheoretical issues. The pursuit ofabsolutism and theoretical arguments lacking practicality, for example, is, in his view, one of the main defects of modern philosophy. Similarly, Toulmin sensed a thinning of morality in the field of sciences, which has diverted its attention from practical issues concerning ecology to the production of theatomic bomb. To solve this problem, Toulmin advocated a return tohumanism consisting of four returns: a return to oral communication and discourse, a plea which has been rejected by modern philosophers, whose scholarly focus is on the printed page; a return to the particular or individual cases that deal with practical moral issues occurring in daily life (as opposed to theoretical principles that have limited practicality); a return to the local, or to concrete cultural and historical contexts; and, finally, a return to the timely, from timeless problems to things whose rational significance depends on the time lines of our solutions. He follows up on this critique inReturn to Reason (2001), where he seeks to illuminate the ills that, in his view, universalism has caused in the social sphere, discussing, among other things, the discrepancy between mainstream ethical theory and real-life ethical quandaries.
Arguing thatabsolutism lacks practical value, Toulmin aimed to develop a different type of argument, calledpractical arguments (also known as substantial arguments). In contrast to absolutists' theoretical arguments, Toulmin's practical argument is intended to focus on the justificatory function of argumentation, as opposed to the inferential function of theoretical arguments. Whereas theoretical arguments make inferences based on a set of principles to arrive at a claim, practical arguments first find a claim of interest, and then provide justification for it. Toulmin believed that reasoning is less an activity of inference, involving the discovering of new ideas, and more a process of testing and sifting already existing ideas—an act achievable through theprocess of justification.
Toulmin believed that for a good argument to succeed, it needs to provide good justification for a claim. This, he believed, will ensure it stands up to criticism and earns a favourable verdict. InThe Uses of Argument (1958), Toulmin proposed a layout containing six interrelated components for analyzing arguments:
The first three elements,claim,ground, andwarrant, are considered as the essential components of practical arguments, while the second triad,qualifier,backing, andrebuttal, may not be needed in some arguments.
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When Toulmin first proposed it, this layout of argumentation was based on legal arguments and intended to be used to analyze the rationality of arguments typically found in the courtroom. Toulmin did not realize that this layout could be applicable to the field of rhetoric and communication until his works were introduced to rhetoricians by Wayne Brockriede and Douglas Ehninger. TheirDecision by Debate (1963) streamlined Toulmin's terminology and broadly introduced his model to the field of debate.[12] Only after Toulmin publishedIntroduction to Reasoning (1979) were the rhetorical applications of this layout mentioned in his works.
One criticism of the Toulmin model is that it does not fully consider the use ofquestions in argumentation.[13] The Toulmin model assumes that an argument starts with a fact or claim and ends with a conclusion, but ignores an argument's underlying questions. In the example "Harry was born in Bermuda, so Harry must be a British subject", the question "Is Harry a British subject?" is ignored, which also neglects to analyze why particular questions are asked and others are not. (SeeIssue mapping for an example of an argument-mapping method that emphasizes questions.)
Toulmin's argument model has inspired research on, for example,goal structuring notation (GSN), widely used for developingsafety cases,[14] andargument maps and associated software.[15]
InReason in Ethics (1950), his doctoral dissertation, Toulmin sets out aGood Reasons approach of ethics, and criticizes what he considers to be the subjectivism and emotivism of philosophers such asA. J. Ayer because, in his view, they fail to do justice to ethical reasoning.
By revivingcasuistry (also known as case ethics), Toulmin sought to find the middle ground between the extremes ofabsolutism andrelativism. Casuistry was practiced widely during theMiddle Ages and theRenaissance to resolve moral issues. Although casuistry largely fell silent during themodern period, inThe Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (1988), Toulmin collaborated withAlbert R. Jonsen to demonstrate the effectiveness of casuistry in practical argumentation during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, effectively reviving it as a permissible method of argument.
Casuistry employs absolutist principles, called "type cases" or "paradigm cases", without resorting to absolutism. It uses the standard principles (for example,sanctity of life) as referential markers in moral arguments. An individual case is then compared and contrasted with the type case. Given an individual case that is completely identical to the type case, moral judgments can be made immediately using the standard moral principles advocated in the type case. If the individual case differs from the type case, the differences will be critically assessed in order to arrive at a rational claim.
Through the procedure of casuistry, Toulmin and Jonsen identified three problematic situations in moral reasoning: first, the type case fits the individual case only ambiguously; second, two type cases apply to the same individual case in conflicting ways; third, an unprecedented individual case occurs, which cannot be compared or contrasted to any type case. Through the use of casuistry, Toulmin demonstrated and reinforced his previous emphasis on the significance of comparison to moral arguments, a significance not addressed in theories of absolutism or relativism.
In 1972, Toulmin publishedHuman Understanding, in which he asserts that conceptual change is anevolutionary process. In this book, Toulmin attacksThomas Kuhn's account of conceptual change in his seminal workThe Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). Kuhn believed that conceptual change is a revolutionary process (as opposed to an evolutionary process), during which mutually exclusiveparadigms compete to replace one another. Toulmin criticized therelativist elements in Kuhn's thesis, arguing that mutually exclusive paradigms provide no ground for comparison, and that Kuhn made the relativists' error of overemphasizing the "field variant" while ignoring the "field invariant" or commonality shared by all argumentation or scientificparadigms.
In contrast to Kuhn'srevolutionary model, Toulmin proposed anevolutionary model of conceptual change comparable to Darwin's model ofbiological evolution. Toulmin states that conceptual change involves the process of innovation and selection. Innovation accounts for the appearance of conceptual variations, while selection accounts for the survival and perpetuation of the soundest conceptions. Innovation occurs when the professionals of a particular discipline come to view things differently from their predecessors; selection subjects the innovative concepts to a process of debate and inquiry in what Toulmin considers as a "forum of competitions". The soundest concepts will survive the forum of competition as replacements or revisions of the traditional conceptions.
From theabsolutists' point of view, concepts are either valid or invalid regardless of contexts. From the relativists' perspective, one concept is neither better nor worse than a rival concept from a different cultural context. From Toulmin's perspective, the evaluation depends on a process of comparison, which determines whether or not one concept will improve explanatory power more than its rival concepts.
At a meeting of the executive council of theCommittee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) inDenver,Colorado in April 2011, Toulmin was selected for inclusion in CSI's Pantheon of Skeptics. The Pantheon of Skeptics was created by CSI to remember the legacy of deceased fellows of CSI and their contributions to the cause of scientific skepticism.[16]
Toulmin's 1958 work is essential in the field of argumentation
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