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model of argument in his influential book, The Uses of Argument (1958). Toulmin’s model was motivated by his belief that the philosophical tradition of formal logic, with its many rules for describing and evaluating the conduct of arguments, conflicts with the practice and idiom (ways of phrasing) of arguers. To radically simplify Toulmin’s case, it is that the syllogism does not adequately account for what really happens when thinkers try to frame and defend various claims. Toulmin tried to describe the structure of argument in a way that he thought came closer to what actually happens in practice when we try to take a position.

FIGURE 9.1

The Toulmin Model.

The Toulmin model of argument renames and reorders the process of reasoning described in the Aristotelian syllogism as follows:

Data: the evidence appealed to in support of a claim; data respond to the question “What have you got to go on?”

Warrant: a general principle or reason used to connect the data with the claim; the warrant responds to the question “How did you get there?” (from the data to the claim).

Claim: a conclusion about the data (see Figure 9.1).

Consider this model in terms of the chapter’s opening discussion of linking evidence and claims. In the Toulmin model, the warrant is the link. It supplies the reasoning that explains why the evidence (support) leads to the conclusion (claim).

Let’s look briefly at how this reasoning structure works in practice by looking at one of Toulmin’s examples.

data: Harry was born in Bermuda.

warrant: The relevant statutes provide that people born in the colonies of British parents are entitled to British citizenship (reason for connecting data to claim);

claim: So, presumably, Harry is a British citizen. (conclusion)

We can now follow Toulmin a little further in his critique and revision of syllogistic ways of describing thinking. A syllogism, as you saw above, is designed to reveal its soundness through the careful framing and arrangement of its terms:

All men are mortal. (All x’s are y.)

Socrates is a man. (Socrates is an x.)

Therefore, Socrates is mortal. (Socrates is a y.)

At what price, asks Toulmin, do we simplify our phrasing of complex situations in the world in order to gain this appearance of truth? In how many situations, he asks, can we say that “all x’s are y”?

The strictness of the rules necessary for guaranteeing formal validity, Toulmin argues, leaves out the greater amount of uncertainty that is a part of reasoning about most questions, issues, and problems. Toulmin observes, using his own argument structure as a case in point, that as soon as an argument begins to add information in support of its premises, the complexity and inevitable tentativeness of the argument become apparent, rather than its evident truth.

Here is Toulmin’s explanation of what must happen to the form of an argument when a person begins to add more supporting information, which Toulmin calls backing. The backing for the warrant in the example above about the British citizenship of people born in Bermuda would inevitably involve mentioning “the relevant statutes”—acts of Parliament, statistical reports, and so forth—to prove its accuracy. The addition of such information, says Toulmin, would “prevent us from writing the argument so that its validity shall be manifest from its formal properties alone” (The Uses of Argument, 123).

Not everyone agrees with Toulmin’s revision or his reasoning. The rhetorician Edward Corbett, for example, argues that the Toulmin system lacks rules and guidelines for assessing the “logicality of the argument” (The Elements of Reasoning, Macmillan, 1991, p. 44). Corbett also argues that Toulmin’s system is less easy to use than it appears, noting that recognizing claims, data, warrants, and backing in an argument may not be any easier than finding conclusions, minor premises, and major premises in a syllogism.

The rules of argument are important for clarifying and testing our thinking. And, of course, many more forms and structures are available in logic than this brief