[lit-ideas] How to Grice a Toulmin
- From: jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2009 01:54:25 EST
Toulmin's claim to fame is 'informalism', i.e. the idea that 'formal logic'
is counterproductive in the education of our children (if we have any).
Arguments, he claimed, proceed _otherwise_.
Yet, Grice should be reconsidered more seriously. Are there, as Grice
claims, rhetorically, "two logics" (in "Logic and Conversation"). Surely,
Grice's answer is, NO! Do not multiply logics beyond necessity.
Toulmin is dissimilarly vague: he talks of a 'logica utens' (or 'working
logic' as he more colloquially puts it) and a 'logica docens' ('idealized
logic', he calls it). But in true form, he should DENY that what he calls
'working' logic IS a logic at all.
Similarly, he speaks of the 'logical goats' (as he doesn't call them) and
the "non-logical goats", which he does call: the 'unruly connective' "but",
the unruly quantifiers "most" and "few". These versus the ruly connective
"and" (cited by Grice as paradigmatically expressed by the formal logician's
"&") and the ruly quantifiers "all" and "some" (both of which Grice
includes in his list of formal devices).
Etc.
So, what we should do is Grice a Toulmin. How? Well, alas, Toulmin never
offered TOO many conversational examples of logical argumenation, unlike
Grice. So, provided we find one, and get Toulmin's anti-logical explanation,
apply all the manoeuvres of a Grice to rebut him!
Cheers,
J. L. Speranza
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