A 'Hello Internet' fan who uses a rational rhetorical framework to sell people clothing alterations:

Tim the Toulmin Tailor.

Vivaldi's "Spring" rudely interrupted by a loud THUNK.

(one second of brain)

Way back in the dark days of episode one,

I put forward a limited set of ideas regarding the best way to debate with people on the internet.

Basically, I wanted to convey that taking the time to structure your thoughts made them easier to work with rationally.

Both for yourself and the people you're trying to convince.

I cited something that's familiar to many philosophers: a logical syllogism.

Which I still think can be a useful way of thinking about these things,

But it does have some drawback when you're talking about every day arguments.

Syllogisms are, essentially, deductive proofs which allow you to move from a set of assumptions to an inescapable conclusion.

Socrates is a man.

All men are mortal.

Therefore Socrates is mortal.

Badda Bing, Badda Boom.

The problem is, unless you're a mathematician or a logician,

deductive proofs aren't really all that useful in every day arguments.

I mean, as much as we'd like to think otherwise, people generally don't disagree with us because

they believe in something that's logically impossible which you can tear apart by using a syllogistic argument.

But, despite the drawbacks of a syllogistic approach, it probably still is a good idea to structure your assertions in some fashion,

rather than just machine gunning facts and feelings at someone and hoping that they put them together the way that you want them to.

Enter Steven Toulmin,

a British moral philosopher, who was kind of down on the very abstract approach that many academics took to the construction of arguments.

Toulmin thought that the deductive approach that they were using was kind of misguided.

That people generally don't build arguments to discover new ideas the way that mathematicians do,

but to provide rational justification for a claim, to convince other people that it's right.

He was more interested in rhetorical, inductive, arguments.

The sort that we make to each other every day to encourage certain behavior or beliefs,

Where we point out certain patterns and events and use them to assert what will probably happen in the future.

You shouldn't leave the leftovers out, you just know that Coco's going to get into them.

Note that these aren't as air-tight as deductive arguments.

You can't prove definitively that Coco IS going to get into the the leftovers the way that you can prove that two plus two equals four.

But, odds are, if you're trying to convince someone of something, you're going to have to use induction to do it.

To help people who are interested in building these sorts of cases effectively,

Toulmin posited a model of what he viewed to be the essential components of rational, persuasive, every-day argumentation,

using successful legal cases as a template.

He suggested that every rational argument could be dissected this way

to see which bits of it come together and where it was weak.

We start with the claim, the thing that we were trying to convince someone of.

Say, 'You shouldn't leave the leftovers out.'

Next, we gather facts that might be relevant to the claim, things like

data or statistics or even just observations that our audience finds credible.

Things like:

Coco ate that burrito right off the table last week,

Coco's vet says she needs to stop eating people food,

we want to save the leftovers for lunches,

Coco's getting fat.

So far, so every-other-argumentative-method-you've-ever-heard-of

But here's where Toulmin's approach gets interesting,

rather than just dumping data and/or conclusion in someone's laps and expecting them to figure it out,

we supply warrant

the mental connection which ties the facts to our claim.

Warrant is why Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, therefore Socrates is a turkey, doesn't make any sense.

The conclusion isn't linked closely enough with the things that are supposed to prove it.

In Toulmin's model, warrant is given its own explicit consideration,

so there's no ambiguity about what's happening in our heads between the facts and our claim.

If her past behavior is any indication, Coco will eat the leftovers if you leave them out, so you should put them away.

Notice that this is an inductive step,

highlighting some pattern in the facts, which suggests cause and effect,

and bridging that pattern to what will ultimately happen.

Warrant can benefit from backing,

facts which can't really prove the point by themselves but support the connection that's being made.

I mean, I wouldn't be able to resist mom's Turkey if it was just sitting out.

That fact doesn't have a lot to do with the Coco situation, as such,

but it does give us a little bit of a reason to believe that the warrant is justified.

Of course, in inductive arguments there are always some bizarre circumstances which would make the cause and effect relationship not work a hundred percent of the time.

For Toulmin's model it's important to reflect carefully on edge cases.

To explicitly note those boundaries where the argument does and doesn't work,

so we can make sure that this particular situation falls within them.

Like, maybe if Coco was asleep, or outside,

or the leftovers in question were something that she didn't like to eat.

Then it's pretty obvious that this whole thing falls apart.

But if she's awake, in the kitchen, staring at them drooling,

then it's probably valid.

As anyone who's studied persuasive rhetoric can tell you,

instead of waiting for our audience to come up with these counter-examples on their own, and think

"Ha-ha, you didn't consider this thoroughly."

We want to prepackage them in our initial assertion,

As if to say "No, look. I thought through every possible angle on this one, and this is where I ended up."

You might think that she's too full to eat anything else, and that might even be anatomically true,

but you know that she'll try anyways and end up throwing up all over the rug.

For me, this hedging process is where the Toulmin method really shines as a tool for rational thought.

By rolling this critical analysis into the argument itself,

you're forced to look at its weak spots, to find out where it doesn't work.

And then to either reinforce it or admit that it's limited.

Imagine if everyone had to do that before they clicked 'Share.'

That's not to say that every single thing that anyone asserts needs

every single part of this structure to be spelled out in order to be valid.

I mean, this whole deal with Coco and the leftovers could be adequately conveyed by:

DUDE! COCO!

But it can certainly help to have names for all the bits of a good rational argument,

both for making our own and for analyzing others,

Especially if we're looking to debate something a little bit more nuanced than whether or not you should put the turkey away when you're done.

Which leads me to one more thing that I wanted to mention.

If you're planning to get into some arguments, either on the internet or elsewhere,

during the holidays,

some computer scientists have done a fun bit of number crunching

to determine common traits of posts which ended up changing people's minds.

And here's the kicker:

They did it on Reddit.

In "Winning Arguments:Interaction Dynamics and Persuasion Strategies in Good Faith Online Discussions"

some researchers at Cornell dissected a huge number of posts from the "Change My View" subreddit.

An internet forum dedicated to level-headed, rational persuasive argumentation.

(pause for comedic effect) No, really.

The basic idea of the board is that someone will present some details about a position,

Then invite commenters to present their best cases against that position in an effort to change the original poster's mind.

If they admit that they're thinking about it in some new way,

they'll flag the post that pushed them over the edge with a delta symbol.

The researchers looked for patterns in the comments which resulted in deltas

and they found some interesting things.

For example: Posts tended to be more successful if they used personal pronouns like 'you' or 'me' or 'us'

possibly because they made the discussion more grounded and relevant for the people involved.

They also tended to mix up the language of the discussion a little bit,

using different words than the original poster used.

Commenters also tended to do better if they used concrete examples

or if they linked to external sources,

using references to make a point rather than asking someone to just take their word for something.

Successful posts didn't try to parrot anything back to the original poster, or lead with emotionally charged languge.

It seems that being angry or using someone's words against them isn't the best way to change their mind.

Question marks were also bad news.

Maybe rhetorical questions don't make the most convincing rhetoric.

And finally, commenters were much more likely to change someone's mind if they hedged their assertions,

using qualifiers like 'perhaps', or 'it's possible that',

defining regions where it wasn't entirely certain

if something was the case all the time.

That sounds familiar, where have I heard that before?

No, wait, I'm sorry. No rhetorical questions.

I said that a couple of minutes ago when I was talking about Toulmin's method.

Of course, these relationships are just observations of correlation, not necessarily causation.

And, the people on CMV are probably not representative of people in general.

There's no guarantee that doing things this way will get someone to come around to your point of view.

But, who knows?

Maybe investing a little bit of thought in how you structure your ideas

can make a difference in how people think about them.

Both other people and yourself.

Maybe even friend on Facebook.

Or people at a family dinner.

What do you think of the Toulmin method?

Please leave a comment below and let me know what you THUNK.

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