[MUSIC PLAYING]
Greetings, scholars.
It's Brian again.
Hey, so far in the course, we've talked about the importance
of argument.
And if you remember, we said argument has three parts.
It's got a conclusion, which we called a claim.
We identified the different parts.
It's got support, which we broke into evidence and values.
And we talked about different parts.
And then we talked about the reasoning process.
We're getting ready to go over the reasoning
process in detail.
But before we do that, we need to learn a model
to understand the way we can get into the process of reasoning.
This is the Toulmin model.
It's named after the scholar Stephen Toulmin.
I'm going to go through the basic parts
of the Toulmin model today.
Hopefully it's something that's a tool
that we can use to break down advocacy and argument.
Let's start off with a very, very simple form
of an argument.
When you're outside and you say, it's super cloudy,
looks like it's going to rain, you've
actually made an argument.
You've got a claim there-- it's going to rain.
And you've got some evidence-- that it looks cloudy.
The question is, how do you move between that claim
and the evidence?
How are they connected?
What's the relationship between the evidence and the claim
there?
Now, in order to understand that,
we need a third term that's important for advocacy.
And the term that we get from Steven Toulmin is warrant.
Warrant is the thing that connects
the claim and the evidence that's being used.
Now, in our example, we really do have a warrant there.
We have the statement-- it looks really, really cloudy;
it's going to rain.
And nobody says it out loud, but it's sort of
understood that cloudy skies are a sign of rain.
So there's our warrant that connects things
to the evidence.
If we want to understand the way that argument functions,
we've got to understand this warrant and the way
that it functions.
It connects evidence and claims.
And the warrant is what determines
the type of reasoning, that last part of argument.
There are three types of warrants
that we're going to discuss--
inductive warrants, they move from
specific to general reasoning; deductive warrants that
move from general to specific reasoning; and finally,
authoritative warrants that are based solely on authority.
Before we get to that, though, let
me talk more about the warrant.
Let's use a better example, something
that's a little longer that will give us
a detailed explanation of the way this thing functions.
I'll still talk about the whether, though.
What if someone walks up to you and says,
it will be fine weather tomorrow?
The evening sky is red, and according to old sailors
that usually means fine weather.
But I don't know if I trust those old sailors.
Now, there we've got a more detailed and thorough function
of argument.
We still have a claim.
It starts off with--
it's going to be fine weather tomorrow.
We can even identify the type of claim that that is.
It's a claim of fact.
It's observable, even though it's something
that happens in the future.
We have some data that's offered.
Now, interestingly enough, our data
is actually about the evening sky, this old statement
that evening skies red means fine weather.
We could identify that as a specific example
to try and figure out the evidence being used.
And then we have all these other things.
So you might ask yourself, first of all,
what's the connection between the evening sky being red
and it being fine weather?
Well again, that's unstated.
It's just sort of assumed between the people that
are talking that evening red skies are
a sign of good weather.
And you might have even saw it like, you
might have thought to yourself, well, I've
never heard that before.
So there, the warrant--
it wasn't something that was shared between us.
So you had that moment where you were unsure.
So there's more to this argument example that
actually helps to back that up.
Remember, I said, it'll be fine weather tomorrow.
The evening sky is red.
And according to old sailors, that usually
means fine weather.
But I don't know if we can trust those old sailors.
Now, that part about the old sailors that's going on,
that's an important part of working in through the warrant.
The old sailors, they serve as support.
It's not support for the claim.
It's not like I have a bunch of old sailors saying, actually,
it's going to be good weather tomorrow.
And it's not like I have sailors saying,
the evening sky is actually red.
Yep, that's the color red all right.
No, no, the sailors are testifying
to the relationship between the evidence and the claim.
So they are backing, we call that.
Backing is support-- not for the claim, not for the data,
but for the warrant.
So they provide a kind of extra level into this argument.
Now we even have a statement that tells us
how often we have the frequency of the warrant.
I said, usually that means fine weather.
Now, that term "usually," that's what we call a qualifier.
A qualifier states the modality of the warrant.
Again, it's not-- usually it's red outside,
or-- usually it's going to be fine whether.
It's usually, when skies are red,
that means good weather the next day.
So again, this is another element of the warrant itself.
And finally, the last thing that I said
was, I don't know if we can trust those old sailors.
So just as the sailors provide support,
there's a part of this model that
can question the relationship between the evidence
and the data.
We call that rebuttal.
Now, that term is used specifically by Toulmin
to identify refutation--
not of the claim, not of the evidence, but of the warrant.
The idea that those sailors might be untrustworthy,
that invalidates the relationship
between the evidence and the claim that's used.
Now, we still have our three elements.
And let me tell you, every argument's
going to have these three parts.
It will always have a claim.
It will always have a warrant.
And you will always have some form of data.
Not always will there be a qualifier,
a backing, or a rebuttal.
Those things are optional, even though they all
revolve around the warrant.
You can think of different arguments you've
encountered that had these different elements,
and some that did not.
But that's the Toulmin model.
It's got six parts--
claim, data, warrant, and then qualifier, backing,
and rebuttal.
So those parts make up the way that it functions.
And they allow us to map the form
of reasoning and the warrant.
It's going to be useful when we get
into induction and deduction.
So good luck using it, scholars.