Toulmin's "analytic arguments"

Abstract

Toulmin's formulation of "analytic arguments" in his 1958 book, The Uses of Argument, is problematic. Neither Toulmin's "tautology test" nor his "verification test" straightforwardly indicates whether an argument is analytic or not. Since these tests supposedly illustrate how we can recognize analytic arguments, Toulmin's notion of analytic arguments and his distinction between analytic and substantial arguments is unclear. What Toulmin's distinction amounts to is an injunction to pay more attention to the criteria that make for cogent arguments, with their field-dependent inference warrants and backings, and less attention to categorical syllogisms, with their deductive entailments expressed in ideal language. While this is a worthwhile project, we need not adopt Toulmin's confusing formulation of analytic and substantial arguments to take it seriously. © Ben Hamby.