Rationality and Reasonableness in Ethics

Stephen Toulmin is the Henry Luce Professor of International Relations and Anthropology at the University of Southern California. This talk was delivered at Sacred Heart University on January 30, 1997, sponsored by the Hersher Institute for Applied Ethics and the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding

The Uses of Argument in Mathematics

Stephen Toulmin once observed that `it has never been customary for philosophers to pay much attention to the rhetoric of mathematical debate'. Might the application of Toulmin's layout of arguments to mathematics remedy this oversight? Toulmin's critics fault the layout as requiring so much abstraction as to permit incompatible reconstructions. Mathematical proofs may indeed be represented by fundamentally distinct layouts. However, cases of genuine conflict characteristically reflect an underlying disagreement about the nature of the proof in question.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures. To be presented at the Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation Conference, McMaster University, May 2005 and LOGICA 2005, Hejnice, Czech Republic, June 200

The Cult of Empiricism in Psychology, and Beyond

At some stage in it\u27s development, any field of intellectual discussion or scientific speculation may reach a point at which it begins to generate large numbers of empirical questions, that is, questions whose answers must refer to carefully documented observations, or even to controlled experiments. In physics, this happened most strikingly in the course of the seventeenth century; in biology, the comparable stage was not reached until around 1770, rising to its peak in the course of the nineteenth century (Toulmin, 1972; Toulmin & Goodfield, 1962); whereas in psychology, it has become customary-though a trifle arbitrary-to argue that this happened just one hundred years ago, with the establishment of Wilhelm Wundt\u27s pioneer psychological laboratory in Leipzig in 1879

Reasoning in Theory and Practice

My book, The Uses of Argument, has had a curious history. Its intention was not to present a new theory of rhetoric, but to prompt a reconsideration, by my colleagues, of the aims and methods of logic; in the spirit of John Dewey\u27s book, Essays in Experimental Logic. Like David Hume\u27s Treatise on Human Nature, it seemingly ‘fell still‑born from the press,’ and the reasons for its sales, which have continued for nearly half a century, were made clear to me only on a visit to North America, when I was told of the book\u27s value to teachers of communication and argumentation. All in all, then, I am grateful to my U.S. and Canadian colleagues, who have taught me to think more deeply about issues I had not given proper attention to in the 1950s. To do Gilbert Ryle justice, the review of the book in Mind referred to it as ‘a revival of [Aristotle\u27s] Topics;’ and this comment throws useful light on our discussion. The ‘general’ topics are forms that are shared by arguments in all fields of thought and action; the ‘special’ topics are those that are at home only in, for example, criminal law or molecular biology. So I will explore how we can use this meeting as an occasion to find ways of educating our fellow citizens to think more clearly about our social and political problems

The Informal Logic of Mathematical Proof

Informal logic is a method of argument analysis which is complementary to that of formal logic, providing for the pragmatic treatment of features of argumentation which cannot be reduced to logical form. The central claim of this paper is that a more nuanced understanding of mathematical proof and discovery may be achieved by paying attention to the aspects of mathematical argumentation which can be captured by informal, rather than formal, logic. Two accounts of argumentation are considered: the pioneering work of Stephen Toulmin [The uses of argument, Cambridge University Press, 1958] and the more recent studies of Douglas Walton, [e.g. The new dialectic: Conversational contexts of argument, University of Toronto Press, 1998]. The focus of both of these approaches has largely been restricted to natural language argumentation. However, Walton's method in particular provides a fruitful analysis of mathematical proof. He offers a contextual account of argumentational strategies, distinguishing a variety of different types of dialogue in which arguments may occur. This analysis represents many different fallacious or otherwise illicit arguments as the deployment of strategies which are sometimes admissible in contexts in which they are inadmissible. I argue that mathematical proofs are deployed in a greater variety of types of dialogue than has commonly been assumed. I proceed to show that many of the important philosophical and pedagogical problems of mathematical proof arise from a failure to make explicit the type of dialogue in which the proof is introduced.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figure, 3 tables. Forthcoming in Perspectives on Mathematical Practices: Proceedings of the Brussels PMP2002 Conference (Logic, Epistemology and the Unity of the Sciences Series), J. P. Van Bendegem & B. Van Kerkhove, edd. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004

Living with Uncertainty

The last few years have seen a major rethinking of some of the hallowed assumptions of range ecology and range management practice. This book examines the management of policy implications of this new ecological thinking for pastoral development in dryland areas. With examples drawn from all over Africa, the contributors examine the consequences of living with uncertainty for pastoral development planning, range and fodder management, drought responses, livestock marketing, resource tenure, institutional development and pastoral administration

Living with Uncertainty

The last few years have seen a major rethinking of some of the hallowed assumptions of range ecology and range management practice. This book examines the management of policy implications of this new ecological thinking for pastoral development in dryland areas. With examples drawn from all over Africa, the contributors examine the consequences of living with uncertainty for pastoral development planning, range and fodder management, drought responses, livestock marketing, resource tenure, institutional development and pastoral administration