Introducing the Online Toulminator

Adventures in automated claim and argument analysis

I built a custom GPT instance you all can use to try to do Toulmin analysis on screenshots yourself, in the manner I do here. Here is the link:

https://chatgpt.com/g/g-677e08bde7588191a699e8e89e26b123-toulminator

The way it works is you take a screenshot of a social media post or exchange that is making an argument of some sort — even a simple argument like '“this is bad” — paste it in, hit upload, and it tries to do a Toulmin analysis.

As always with ChatGPT there’s a randomness to it, and I can’t vouch for the results. Sometimes it will go very wrong. You have to review results for accuracy and logical consistency yourself. But if you’re looking for quick context on something, or to understand the strengths and weaknesses of an argument, it will try its best. (Yeah, I know, it doesn’t really “try” only humans try. Anthromorphism, do not pass go, do not collect $200).

Because it can be daunting to look for social media posts in the moment, I’m posting some sample content below you can paste in it.

Let me know in the comments your experience with it. Obviously it’s far from perfect, but even with the occasional errors I find it promising.