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18.1 Simple Arguments
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Toulmin’s Model, in its original form, described only a simple argument consisting of a single claim linked to a single piece of evidence and, perhaps (but not always), accompanied by an exception. The following shows Toulmin’s diagram of a simple argument:
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Toulmin illustrates this diagram using a simple argument claiming that Harry is a British citizen because he was born in Bermuda. Below, his example has been revised to illustrate the claim that He Jing is an American citizen because she was born in Los Angeles, California. Here is a diagram of the structure of that argument:
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In the above illustration, an arguer claims that He Jing is a United States citizen because of the evidence that she was born in the United States. The link between the claim and the evidence is the statement that “People born in the United States generally are United States citizens.” Links are sometimes only implicit in an argument. In this particular case, one could easily envision the argument being made without a stated link: “He Jing is a United States citizen because she was born in Los Angeles.” The link is so generally accepted that the arguer may not even need to include it in the actual argument. Although the link is generally accepted, an arguer might not wish to support this claim in all situations. In other words, the arguer may want to include an exception to the claim. One of those exceptions is spelled out in the diagram above. In that example, the arguer suggests that the claim is a reasonable one unless He Jing’s parents were Chinese citizens. If her parents were Chinese citizens, she might either be a United States citizen or a Chinese citizen depending on choices made by her parents.
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The illustration below presents an example more related to what might be an actual debate about education policy:
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In that example, the claim is that all children under the age of 16 should be required to attend school. The claim is supported by evidence suggesting that people who attend school are less likely to be poorer than people who do not attend school. That evidence might come in the form of a statistic or an empirical study. The evidence does not lead directly to the claim because the argument contains nothing to suggest that requiring children to attend school will have any effect on their actual attendance. Thus, a link is drawn suggesting that laws requiring children to attend school will help ensure their attendance. Such a link probably takes the form of a causal relationship, indicating that certain laws (the cause) lead to more children attending school (effect), as discussed in Chapter 17. That link connects the evidence to the claim in a way that makes the claim plausible. The illustration also contains an exception regarding children who might need to be exempt from attendance because of medical or religious exemptions.
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One subtlety needs to be added to the discussion of the four elements of argument. In many instances, evidence may consist of a previously supported claim. For instance, in the above example regarding education, a debater may have previously constructed a cause and effect argument that had as its claim, “People who attend school are less likely to be poor.” Then, that claim is used in an argument as evidence to support a new claim that “All children under 16 should be required to attend school.”
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Although the above diagrams clearly illustrate how arguments move from evidence to claim via links, very few arguments are ever that simple. For this reason, we have adapted Toulmin’s Model to illustrate a few different argument structures. In addition to the simple argument structure above, other structures include combined and independent arguments. Although they do not even begin to exhaust all potential argument structures, they are some of the more common ones encountered in debate.
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18.2 Combined Arguments
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A combined argument is one in which two or more bits of evidence are joined to support a claim. When a single piece of evidence is insufficient, it must be combined with another piece of evidence to support the claim. The following diagram illustrates the structure of a combined argument:
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The feature that distinguishes a combined argument from a simple one is that more than one piece of evidence is required to infer the claim. Thus, the above diagram uses two pieces of evidence connected to one another with a plus (+) sign to indicate that both pieces of evidence must be added to one another to get to the claim.
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To illustrate a combined argument, we have chosen a claim that “Nations of the world should reduce their dependence on nuclear power.” The following diagram illustrates the argument:
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That particular argument suggests a claim that nations of the world should reduce their dependence on nuclear power. The claim is supported by two pieces of evidence both of which might come in the form of expert testimony. The first piece of evidence is that nuclear power is a dangerous alternative. Any astute debater would quickly notice that the first piece of evidence is not, by itself, sufficient to support the suggestion to reduce the use of nuclear energy, because so far, the argument has not suggested that safer, less dangerous alternatives exist. Thus, a necessary second piece of evidence, perhaps also in the form of testimony, is introduced: alternative sources of energy are less dangerous than nuclear power. Neither of the two pieces of evidence alone supports the claim. The claim is only supported when a debater successfully produces both pieces of evidence.
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Then, to fully support the claim, a link is added to suggest that safer alternatives should replace dangerous ones. The claim results from a combination of two pieces of evidence that are then linked to the claim. In some instances, the debater may not wish to hold to this claim in all circumstances. In those situations, the debater may suggest an exception such as the one presented in the illustration.
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The unique feature of the combined argument structure is that the arguer produces a collection of evidence that, if taken together, supports the claim. The structure of the argument is such that the audience must believe all of the evidence in order to support the argument. If the debater fails to convince the audience of even one piece of evidence, the entire argument structure falls. On the other hand, using the next argument structure—the independent argument—any single piece of evidence can provide sufficient support for the argument.
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18.3 Independent Arguments
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