Examination of theses either expressly espoused by Stephen Toulmin or suggested by his writings reveals a general scepticism about the applicability of received theories to the real-life practice of individual agents. Chief among these theories are the logics of deduction and induction, notably probability theory. Key to Toulmin's reservations are the contextual conditions that both animate and constrain the performance of beings like us. On their first appearance, Toulmin's heterodoxies were met with stiff resistance, or they were simply ignored. Developments in computer science, cognitive psychology and logic itself in the past forty years have produced a research record that is much more welcoming to Toulmin's views. In this essay, I attempt to add to this welcome. I do so in a spirit of repentance of my own earlier resistance, and in confirmation of the adage that later is sometimes better than never. © 2006 Springer.
CITATION STYLE
Woods, J. (2006). Eight theses reflecting on Stephen Toulmin. In Arguing on the Toulmin Model: New Essays in Argument Analysis and Evaluation (pp. 379–397). Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4938-5_25
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