Abstract
Reasoning by analogy comes in many forms, among which analogical arguments are one. However, arguments by analogy also come in many different types and subtypes and the evaluation of any kind of argument depends on what type of argument it is, in other words what essential features it has. It is, therefore, important for a critical thinker to know what type of analogical argument is being used, and to have some basic idea of how to classify the argument that is to be evaluated. However, the problem of determining which type of argument is being employed, is that many philosophers and argumentation theorists often use the same term for what are essentially different arguments, or vice versa; they may use different terms for what is essentially the same type of analogical argument. Another problem is that various philosophers and argumentation theorists focus on different features as criteria for classification. Thus, several classifications are used based on various criteria and seen from various perspectives. In this essay, I attempt to provide a solution to this problem, and provide a systematic review of different ways of classifying arguments by analogy. It reviews proposals by authors for classifying arguments by analogy. The aim of this article is to give the reader a glimpse at an overview of various classifications of analogical arguments.
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Notes
- 1.
An extensive literature search was designed to identify and retrieve primary studies relevant to the project’s major research question. The database Philosopher’s index was used to some extent but mostly the web search engines Google and Google Scholar. The search was very broad, the key words used was “analog*”, or “analogy”, or “argument” + “analog*” or “reasoning” + “analog*”, or “argument” + “comparison” or “case-based reasoning”, in order to not miss anything that could be relevant for the study. The following inclusion criteria were used: (a) accessibility—the study must be publicly available or archived; (b) relevancy—the study must contain arguments by analogy; (c) sufficiency—it must be fairly easy to identify what kind of classification an author implicitly or explicitly employs in his analogical arguments; (d) language—the material must be in English. I further made a search of “analog*” on the Informal Logic website and on the Argumentation website.
- 2.
I share Hoylak (2005, p. 118) view of analogy: “Analogy is a special kind of similarity: two situations are analogous if they share a common pattern of relationships among their constituent elements even though the elements themselves differ across the two situations.”
- 3.
For a discussion about the difference and how it relates to the philosophy of law, see D. Canale and G. Tuzet, “Analogy and interpretation in legal argumentation” (published in this volume).
- 4.
For example, David Botting (2012) claims that Wreen, Govier and Waller think that one type of argument by analogy are an inductive argument, but this is not so. Talk about inductive argument by analogy could mean (1) being reducible to argument by induction without any reference to genuine analogy and (2) being irreducible to inductive or deductive argument but have a similarity with inductive probabilistic reasoning, with an analogical relation as a necessary part. Govier (1985, 2010) and Wreen (2007) and Waller (2001) believes in (2) not (1).
- 5.
Brown (1989, p. 164) also mentions figurative analogy which he regards as a weakened version of proportional analogy. Furthermore, Brown claims that an analogy is never merely illustrative, explanatory, metaphorical, or literary. They always play some role in an argument.
- 6.
Brown (1989, p. 169) states: “I can think of no way to transform a proportional analogy involving an ordered pair of attributes into predictive form: ‘As the Porsche surpasses the Volkswagen in speed, so does the Cadillac surpass the Chevrolet in luxury’. In fact, such a transformation is impossible because Porsche and Cadillac are not said to have any property in common.”
- 7.
The example was an analogy that used discrepant treatment of real similar cases to argue for the actual problematic treatment of black women by the U.S: courts. Further, as Guarini remarks, one cannot claim that the difference is that a priori analogies can sometimes make use of hypothetical cases, while inductive analogies cannot, since some inductive analogies work well even when the source analogue is hypothetical.
- 8.
- 9.
The other two objections argue that several arguments, which according to Barker’s definition are non-deductive and non-inductive, are clearly inductive. However, his objection misses the fact that they could be said to be abductive, which would avoid the objection.
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Juthe, A. (2014). A Systematic Review of Classifications of Arguments by Analogy. In: Ribeiro, H. (eds) Systematic Approaches to Argument by Analogy. Argumentation Library, vol 25. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-06334-8_7
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