A Treatise on Toulmin's Critique of Syllogism

Toulmin while constructing his own argument model brings up some criticisms of syllogism. Transformation of syllogism into just a theoretical and mental calculation tool under the name of logic; that syllogism is not used in practical fields; obscurities of the constituent parts in syllogism; traditional reading order of syllogism; whether or not premises in syllogism state the implication of existence; field obscurity of syllogism, all these are the most striking of the mentioned criticisms. But, while Toulmin criticizes syllogism, he seems to have misapprehended Aristotle's understanding of syllogism. That is, although he especially focuses on the rhetorical model offering as an alternative to the mentioned criticisms, he does not discuss the dialectical syllogisms to which important functions are attributed in Aristotle's philosophy, and does not make analytical syllogisms clear. On the other hand, Toulmin's own argument model contains many influences from syllogism. However, many ambiguous points in Aristotle's rhetoric are enlightened thanks to Toulmin's discussions on syllogism. In this respect, opening Toulmin's relevant criticisms up for discussion has a big potential to the questioning and perhaps changing and developing the traditional perspective on syllogism. As a result, we claim that his criticisms make significant contributions to a better understanding of not only syllogism but also argument.