Rhetorician and ethicist Stephen E. Toulmin has died. While I haven’t been able to fit his full system into my freshman writing courses, I did create a brief handout on the Toulmin method.
Arguing against the absolute truth advocated in Plato’s idealized
formal logic, Toulmin said that truth can be relative. Historical and
cultural contexts, he said, must be taken into consideration.He concluded that absolutism fails to consider the field-dependent
aspects of argument. Advocating a universal truth, absolutists believe
that a standard set of moral principles — regardless of context — can
solve all moral dilemmas. But Toulmin purported that many of these
standard principles cannot be applied to day-to-day life in the real
world.–USC News
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I think it really means nobody owns the truth, and that every truth claim is as much a claim as it is a reality. Claims can be tested.
I think “truth can be relative” means something like “studying truth as a relative value leads to valuable insight that isn’t accessible through a lens that sees all truth as absolute”.
“Arguing against the absolute truth advocated in Plato’s idealized formal logic, Toulmin said that truth can be relative. Historical and cultural contexts, he said, must be taken into consideration.”
I do hope Toulmin pointed out this concept only in terms of history and culture. Otherwise he gets an F in math!