It is true that we do not speak in premises as part of our pedestrian conversations. It is important to be able to distill a claim down to a premise that can be born out through deductive reasoning. What I appreciated about the Toulmin model of deductive reasoning is that it brought me back to the understanding that, in some things, truth is relative to the person experiencing it. In the textbook example of a student claiming that a class should not be taken because the homework load is too high, the argument is both valid and sound for the individual who received nothing from the course because they were bogged down with homework. Yet, it is not an absolute truth that can be applied arbitrarily to all students who wish to take the course, as was pointed out in the challenge to the warrant which stated that some students perform better with a larger amount of homework which reinforces course concepts for them. In cases such as these, is there an absolute truth? Is there an argument that can be absolutely sound? I am not
It is true that we do not speak in premises as part of our pedestrian conversations. It is important to be able to distill a claim down to a premise that can be born out through deductive reasoning. What I appreciated about the Toulmin model of deductive reasoning is that it brought me back to the understanding that, in some things, truth is relative to the person experiencing it. In the textbook example of a student claiming that a class should not be taken because the homework load is too high, the argument is both valid and sound for the individual who received nothing from the course because they were bogged down with homework. Yet, it is not an absolute truth that can be applied arbitrarily to all students who wish to take the course, as was pointed out in the challenge to the warrant which stated that some students perform better with a larger amount of homework which reinforces course concepts for them. In cases such as these, is there an absolute truth? Is there an argument that can be absolutely sound? I am not