Abstract: Given my defense, in Chapter 2, of the idea that the regulative conditions for argumentation have to be specified in terms of its constitutive conditions, it follows that, if argumentation is a complex of logical, dialectical and rhetorical properties, as contended in Chapter 3, then good argumentation will be argumentation satisfying logical, dialectical and rhetorical conditions. Yet, the other side of this coin is that argumentative normativity cannot be reduced to rhetorical, dialectical or logical conditions alone. Thus, this chapter is devoted to characterizing the logical dimension of argumentation as the dimension providing the semantic normative conditions of acts of arguing and acts of reasoning; but, additionally, it seeks show that logical normativity is not equivalent to argumentative normativity tout court. To this end, my first task in this chapter is to introduce the ideas that Toulmin first presented in The Uses of Argument (1958), both as a leading work on the nature of Logic and as an attempt at providing a tool for argumentation appraisal. Afterwards, I explain the differences between Toulmin's approach and mine by considering the criticisms that his conception of Logic has received. One of the main differences between both approaches has to do with two alternative conceptions of the warrant of an argument. In the last section of this chapter I argue for my account of warrants by considering how far Toulmin's model of argument is committed to relativism. The result of this discussion will be an alternative model of argument that is meant to be a representation of the type of acts in which inferences supervene, namely, acts of reasoning and acts of arguing. This model incorporates most Toulminian insights but it includes a distinction between epistemic and ontological qualifiers that is based on our characterization of the speech act complex of arguing.
Publication Year: 2011
Publication Date: 2011-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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