justifying/justification |
Working Definition:
the cognitive process whose outcome is a probable belief
Disciplinary Definitions:
"Justifying" is based on Toulmin's delineation of informal argumentation in The Uses of Argument.
In tackling our main problems about the assessment of arguments, it will be worth while clearing our minds of ideas derived from existing logical theory, and seeing by direct inspection what are thecategories in of which we actual express our assessments, and what precisely they to us. This is the reason why, in the earlier of these studies at any reate, I shall deliberately avoid terms like 'logic', 'logical', 'logically necessary', 'deductive', and 'demonstrative.' All such terms carry over from logical theroy a load of associations which could prejudice one main aim of our inquiry: to see how—if at all—the formal analysis of theoretical logic ties up with the business of rational criticism. . . . Logic is concerned with the soundness of the claims we make—with the solidity of the grounds we produce to support them, the firmness of the backing we provide for them—or, to change the metaphor, with the sort of case we present in defence of our claims. The legal analogy implied in this last way of putting the point can for once be a real help. So let us foret about psychology, sociology, technology, and mathematics, ignore the echoes of structural engineering and collage in the words 'grounds' and 'backing,' and take as our model the dicipline of jurisprudence. Logic (we may say) is generalised jurisprudence. Arguments can be compared with law-suits, and the claims we make and argue for in extra-legal contents with the claims made in the courts, while the cases we present in making good each kind of claim can be compared with each other. A main task of the procedures by which claims-at-law are put forward, disputed and determined, and the categories in terms of which this is done. Our own inquiry is a parallel one: we shall aim, in a similar way, to characterize what may be called 'the rational process', the procedures and categories by using which claims in general can be argued for and settled. 6-7
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last revised:
June 13, 2007
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