Philetus said:
Toulmin thought that few arguments actually follow classical models of logic like the syllogism, so he developed a model for analyzing the kind of argument you hear every day. His form focuses on identifying the basic parts of an argument and is usually used in two ways: to analyze by identifying the basic elements of the arguments being made, and to test and critique your own argument.
It is really a very useful model for analyzing the soundness of an argument. You just identify each argument's claims, data, and warrants; then look for qualifiers, rebuttals, and backing for the warrants. Compare the claims and the data between the two arguments. Compare warrants and their backing, qualifiers, and rebuttals. By analyzing the separate parts of an argument, one should be better equipped to evaluate each argument's strengths and weaknesses.
The danger is in complicating an issue to the point that nobody has any idea what your are talking about so that when you are challenged you can dismiss your opponents as ‘fools’ and then redefine the word fool so you feel warm and fuzzy. Or you can always shift away from the issue and just argue about arguing. If that doesn’t work bail out because you are busy and have smarter things to do.
Such misuse of the Toulmin approach/system can complicate a simple argument and actually prevent understanding. Those who do so become obsessed with their own arguments and fail to know when they have been smacked by the truth.
Freedom is not only dependant upon our access to the information (how well we are formed to be able to get to such a level). I find it helpful to also keep in mind that we need to be able to handle the truth if we are to be set free. Enjoy you reading ... it's not as bad as some have made out.
This is a great thread. I hope Toulmin helps … keep it simple.
Jest foolling arround,
Philetus
It's funny but my posts have not been driven by Toulmin's classical models of logic. What I have read comes from his later book called
Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity. The class I am taking is a class that discusses the issues of Modernity including the currents myths that sustain it, the disagreements on its starting and ending dates, as well as the current response to this era. When I said Toulmin could bring to light some of my thinking, I was referring to this understanding of Modernity.
You see, logic, according to Toulmin, comes down to us as the primary means of communication in our Modern period, especially from the 17th century and on where there was a shift in philosophical endeavors that moved us from the oral to the written word. This shifted us from rhetoric to logic. At this point in history questions of who is writting, what are they writting, to whom are they writting, what form of logic is governing their writting, ect., were deamed to be questions no longer worth asking, because logical proofs were something that could transcend any contextual critique. The context of the arguement is unimportant, because if the person is logical, they transcend their context to participate in something more universal and eternal.
Now I realize that it becomes tricky not to revert into ad hominem or the like when one uses rhetoric to critique an argument. But to pretend that logical discourse is entirely disconnected from one's context is a bit naive. Current scholars will claim that Descartes and other Philosophers of Descartes' time were able to leave their context behind them to engage in this logical discourse so that their ideas were untainted by the world and presented to us a rational argument that stood as a universal argument that anyone could read and agree to in as much as Descartes' theory engaged in rational discourse. Descartes may not apply his theories very well (when he uses them to explain a solar system filled with fluid) but the logical proofs he established are used by Newton and other scholars, even to the present day, demonstrating his rationality that transcends context.
Toulmin argues that Descartes could not have been as disengaged with the world around him as the current scholars claim of Descartes. He also demonstrates that the Modern period does not begin in tranquility, nor is the Modern period monolithic (he points out two movements that start off the Modern period, humanism then "rationalism" [that is rationalism of the Modern variety]).
What I have been trying to demonstrate is that all the arguments that I have heard on this current thread depend entirely on rationality as framed by this intellectual movement that began in the 16th and 17th centuries (or even earlier) and culminated in the Enlightenment. This intellectual movement only has strength in as much as it can get people to believe certain myths about progress in the Modern Period. And because we find ourselves within this context, it is very important that we return to rhetoric, in order that we might see just what is framing our thought.
You see, the Modern period is not the only time in which logic was important. Nor is the Modern understanding of logical discourse the only truly rational approach. Before our age, Aquinas spoke of logic and rationality, but always within a context. One could not assume a universality in one's own logic. True logic and rationality were demonstrated in one's ability to deal with one's context. Ethical constructions of Aquinas' time were not universal arguments made for all people at all times, but ethics for Aquinas were about rightly understanding one's context and being able to respond to that context rightly. In order to be truly rational in Aquinas' time one had to balance logic with rhetoric.
Thus we arrive at Modern Christian thought with regards to God. When theologians after the 17th century spoke concerning God, they spoke in a manner that tried to give us the all-encompassing understanding of God. At this point we began to speak about God's nature (rational proofs of what God was like). The Protestants and Catholics just before and always after the 17th century were out to get the other side to see just how right they were. The only way they could force such a claim on their brother or sister was to engage in universal truth statements about God that if rejected would then allow that side to label the other side as heretical (it would allow Christians to kill one another in the name of their "universal" truth). The Christian life no longer concerned how one acted (it wasn't an actual life) but the Christian life concerned what one "believed." Actions were out; intellectual ascent to certain truth statements was in. We had disconnected the two sides of
pistis and had subverted one aspect over the other. Faith was entirely about "belief" and "trust"; faith no longer encompassed faithfulness, loyalty and fielty. Faith without works was not so dead.
I think this movement in the Modern period is very ironic, because we claim to be much more distant from the Pharisees than we actually are. We think that in our "rational" approach to God that we have somehow escaped the legalism of the Pharisees. What we don't realize is that we have rather embraced the very same legalism that Christ had chided the Pharisees for. We have traded instruction from God (
torah) for law (that is
torah without God). We have embraced universal truths that no longer need to be enlightened by God himself. Jesus no longer needs to be incarnate to us; Jesus allows us to be rational and to transcend all the mess of context that comes in the incarnation. Rather than having a God that calls a people to live faithfully for him in this world as a light to the nations, we now have a set of individuals who in their own mind "experience God." We have allowed rationality to entirely disembody Christ, so that the incarnation for us no longer really matters.
Logos no longer is flesh and blood to us, as it was for the early church (and you need to remember that John is writing long after Jesus' death and resurrection and ascention; John is writing to a people who are well appart from the physical Christ).
Logos for us today means once again a universal principle that holds together the universe. We have once again embraced the understanding of
logos that was right at home among the gnostics of the early Christian period.
Logic and reason have the same fundamental framework in our age as
logos did for the people of the first century. In embracing such an understanding of reason and logic as as a set of universal principles that uphold the cosmos we have embraced something quite different from what we received in Christ, the tradition handed down to us in the church.
Logos for Christians is not a universal principle;
logos for Christians is Christ, that is to say we understand the universe in the person of our Lord, and it is embodied, enfleshed, and incarnate, not vice versa.
We start with the local tangible setting as Christians and only then can we move to the universal. We do not start with belief statements concerning universal truths; we do not start with logical arguments that can prove God's existence. We as Christians start with Christ, and him born of a Virgin, teaching his disciples, suffering at the hands of Pontius Pilot, crucified dead and buried, resurrected, and ascended to God the Father. God is not made manifest to us in universality (rational and logical proofs); God is made manifest to us in Christ, not as God "really is" (whatever that means) but as God among us (a particular and local manifestation of God). And Christ continues to be made manifest in the local setting, as those who follow Christ continue to witness to his life and obey his teachings (that means the Catholics got it wrong when they tried to turn the elements of the Eucharist into that witness).
We as Protestants have turned the witness of Christ into a personal relationship (which is entirely wrapped up in the individual). The Body of Christ has been dismembered so that the testimony of individuals can take the center stage to lead other individuals into a cathartic moment of guilt so that they can pray a prayer and expect that to usher them into the life of Christ (through an aleviation of guilt). Instead of transforming the individual, however, the catharsis turns them into psychotic wrecks who at the very next moment when they are made to experience more guilt they must repeat the catharsis. And because we live in a context where guilt becomes a part of life's ebbs and flows, people continue to fluctuate between their "forgiveness" and their "condemnation."
The god who relates to us within our context is no God at all. That is not to say that God does not care for us. It is to say that God knows better how to care for God's own creation than do we as members of it. Relationship is a dirty word in my mind. People throw it around as if they understood what it entailed, as if relationship were a good in and of itself. Relationship, however, is a neutral thing. One can relate to their neighbor by loving that neighbor, or one can relate to their neighbor by ignoring their neighbor. Relationship is neutral, and requires that two parties enter into it as neutral and free entities.
Thankfully I do not serve a God who seeks a relationship with me. The God of Creation does not treat me as I have asked or warranted. He doesn't treat me as a free individual who can make my own decisions. No, I serve a God of love, who will see my "freedom" for what it really is, and who will not give me up to my slavery. The God I serve is a God who in the midst of my slavery, in my own "freedom," will give of himself in order that I might be saved (that is delivered from the very sin that entangles me, the sin I had embraced); this God ushers me into the life that God desires for me in God's Creation. And in this act of love, God demonstrates his true power, for this God is the God who made all things, and in this God all things hold together.
And because God is the Creator, God is not fearful of anything that might come from within God's Creation. This God is not "in control" as if anything were in danger of coming undone in God. If God were to control the Creation, God would be no different from us, for we in our fear of what we do not control, seek to control what is not ours in the first place. But God need not control God's Creation, for the Creation is the Lord's and all that is in it. "For by God and through God and to God are all things, and in God they all consist."
God is not our personal saviour. God is the Maker of the Heavens and the Earth, and his desire for us is not that we relate to him as we relate to one another (as if we knew what it was to love one another through our "relationships"). No, God teaches us to love, for God is love. And as the God of love, we know nothing of love appart from God. "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us." God from the very beginning has given of God's self for the Creation, and God will bring the Creation to its proper
telos in worship in shared rest with the Creator. We can offer nothing to our God. That is the very nature of God's love, it desires nothing from the other. If we even had something to offer there would be something to desire. But we have nothing to offer God that God has not already given to us. So how do we love God? We take that which was given to us as a gift and offer it back to our God freely. It is not as though God would desire such a gift (for all that is, already belongs to God). But in offering it freely we share in the joy of the Creator as the Creator accomplishes what he set out to do. God is the owner of this vineyard, and we as tenants of this vineyard owe all of its fruits to our God; but God in God's love has offered to share with us the fruits. If we take them for ourselves, we will have accomplished nothing, for God will come and take back what is his (and he will not weep over the sheding of our blood). But if we faithfully give to our God what belongs to him already, we will have a bountiful share in what is not ours, and we will have a part in the Son's inheritance.
This is an image of patronage, of the Lord and the vassals, and if we do not see our place in this properly we will be doomed to destroy ourselves. We by nature are slaves, servants of the Creator God (not because God needs our labor, but because our entire life is a gift from God). We labor not for the benefit of our God, but we labor for our own well-being. But we do not labor unceasingly. We labor to accomplish God's work in the Creation, and when it is done, we will share in God's rest.
This is not the image of the Open God (a distant God, I might add). This is the image of the God who is other, and because of God's otherness is more immanent than we could hope for or dream.
Peace,
Michael
