An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics

The central problem of ethics, according to Stephen Toulmin, is that of finding a way to distinguish good moral arguments from weak ones, good reasons from poor ones, and deciding whether there comes a point in the course of moral argument when the giving of reasons becomes superfluous. The inquiry he undertakes in An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics centers on the question of what makes a particular set of facts that bear on a moral decision a "good reason" for acting in a particular way. The author contends that he has no interest in a circular argument to the effect that a "good reason" is one that supports the kind of act he would regard as a "good act"; his task is to clarify the nature of moral reasoning and the kind of logic that goes into it.