Philosophy, argumentation

Stephen Toulmin

1922 – 2009

Claim, grounds, warrant, rebuttal — a way of slowing a decision by exactly one useful step, without turning it into a study.

Read alongside: Sense

Start with
The Uses of Argument (1958)
Where they resist the book
Laid over a live conversation the model can formalise what was better left conversational.

Works worth the time

The Uses of Argument · 1958

Claim, grounds, warrant, rebuttal — the model that slows a decision by one useful step.

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Read further

Where Toulmin appears

II. StayCritical thinking

Urgency is the most common defeater of judgement.

Speed is not the enemy; unexamined speed is. Toulmin's anatomy of an argument — claim, grounds, warrant, rebuttal — is a way of slowing a decision by exactly one useful step. Popper's contribution is the habit of asking what evidence would change your mind, before the evidence arrives.