The problem with these models is that they can become a straitjacket—it might become too boring to argue using them. That said, I’m in principle all for making the structure of your arguments clearer and more explicit. Analytic philosophers have worked a lot on this, of course. Mathematical logic was in part invented for this purpose. Then again, even though it is good to have such tools available, it is sometimes better to write in ordinary prose without use of any special aids. You have to make a cost-benefit analysis: do you gain more than you lose by using a model such as Toulmin’s or the one you envisage, or formal logic, than by writing in ordinary prose without any special aids?
The people who gain the most from structured arguments are the people who don’t need to sift through ten blog posts and hundreds of comments. The gains for the writers are more along the lines of less time reiterating arguments in different contexts.
I agree that ordinary prose is needed sometimes. And that different situations call for different degrees of structuring to the argument. Which is why I think that it’d be very important to make this tool flexible.
Argumentation theorists have worked out models for structuring arguments. See, e.g. the Toulmin Model:
http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~digger/305/toulmin_model.htm
The problem with these models is that they can become a straitjacket—it might become too boring to argue using them. That said, I’m in principle all for making the structure of your arguments clearer and more explicit. Analytic philosophers have worked a lot on this, of course. Mathematical logic was in part invented for this purpose. Then again, even though it is good to have such tools available, it is sometimes better to write in ordinary prose without use of any special aids. You have to make a cost-benefit analysis: do you gain more than you lose by using a model such as Toulmin’s or the one you envisage, or formal logic, than by writing in ordinary prose without any special aids?
The people who gain the most from structured arguments are the people who don’t need to sift through ten blog posts and hundreds of comments. The gains for the writers are more along the lines of less time reiterating arguments in different contexts.
Given a Toulmin-like model, shouldn’t it be fairly easy to automate the process of writing it out as prose?
I agree that ordinary prose is needed sometimes. And that different situations call for different degrees of structuring to the argument. Which is why I think that it’d be very important to make this tool flexible.