The British philosopher Stephan Toulmin, in his The Uses of Argument, made the provocative claim that "logic is generalized jurisprudence." For Toulmin, logic is the study of nonns for practical argumentation and decision making. In his view, mathematical logicians were preoccupied with fonnalizing the concepts of logical necessity, consequence and contradiction, at the expense of other equally important issues, such as how to allocate the burden of proof and make rational decisions given limited resources. He also considered it a mistake to look primarily to psychology, linguistics or the...

The British philosopher Stephan Toulmin, in his The Uses of Argument, made the provocative claim that "logic is generalized jurisprudence." For Toulmin, logic is the study of nonns for practical argumentation and decision making. In his view, mathematical logicians were preoccupied with fonnalizing the concepts of logical necessity, consequence and contradiction, at the expense of other equally important issues, such as how to allocate the burden of proof and make rational decisions given limited resources. He also considered it a mistake to look primarily to psychology, linguistics or the...