Ian said:
Interestingly I'm kinda getting that message from Stephen Toulmin too.
Interested to know if you've read him (Cosmopolis & Return to Reason) what you
made of him ? Lots of wisdom.
dmb says:
Hadn't heard of him before but spent ten minutes checking it out and he looks
like an ally already. This section of the Wiki, for example...
Objection to absolutism & relativismThroughout many of his works, Toulmin
pointed out that absolutism (represented by theoretical or analytic arguments)
has limited practical value. Absolutism is derived from Plato’s idealized
formal logic, which advocates universal truth; accordingly, absolutists believe
that moral issues can be resolved by adhering to a standard set of moral
principles, regardless of context. By contrast, Toulmin asserts that many of
these so-called standard principles are irrelevant to real situations
encountered by human beings in daily life.To reinforce his assertion, Toulmin
introduced the concept of argument fields; in The Uses of Argument (1958),
Toulmin states that some aspects of arguments vary from field to field, and are
hence called “field-dependent,” while other aspects of argument are the same
throughout all fields, and are hence called “field-invariant.” The flaw of
absolutism, Toulmin believes, lies in its unawareness of the field-dependent
aspect of argument; absolutism assumes that all aspects of argument are field
invariant.Recognizing the intrinsic flaw of absolutism, Toulmin’s theories
resolve to avoid the defects of absolutism without resorting to relativism:
relativism, Toulmin asserted, provides no basis for distinguishing between a
moral or immoral argument. In Human Understanding (1972), Toulmin suggests that
anthropologists have been tempted to side with relativists because they have
noticed the influence of cultural variations on rational arguments; in other
words, the anthropologist or relativist overemphasizes the importance of the
“field-dependent” aspect of arguments, and becomes unaware of the
“field-invariant” elements. In an attempt to provide solutions to the problems
of absolutism and relativism, Toulmin attempts throughout his work to develop
standards that are neither absolutist nor relativist for assessing the worth of
ideas.In Cosmopolis (1990), he traces philosophers' "quest for certainty" back
to Descartes and Hobbes, and lauds Dewey, Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Rorty for
abandoning that tradition.
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