It seems like there’s a paradox about attacking analogies: if you say “Here are examples of Argument by Analogy not being valid, so your Argument by Analogy is not valid”, you’re engaging in Argument by Analogy yourself. It’s also not clear what the point of mentioning the airplanes with beaks is. If people were saying “Birds have beaks, therefore planes must need beaks”, that would be poor logic, but if people were saying “Birds have beaks, so we should try beaks”, that’s quite reasonable. It’s all well and good to look with hindsight at people trying something that turned out to not be right and laugh at how silly they are, but being willing to try out different hypotheses even if people are going to think you look silly if the hypotheses are wrong is an important skill.
EY keeps adding the qualifier “surface” to the term “similarities”, but that’s largely begging the question. “Analogies based on invalid bases are invalid” is a bit of a tautology.
It’s also frustrating how people insist on pretending that analogies are comparing the elements of the analogy, rather the relationship between the elements. For instance, SSM advocates argued that the Full Faith and Credit clause compelled states to recognize SSMs from other states. Obama pointed out that there was case law saying that states don’t have to recognize marriages that violate their age of consent or consanguinity laws. Dan Savage then proceeded to accuse Obama of comparing homosexuality to pedophilia and incest. Make comparisons between robbery and rape, and feminists will accuse you of comparing women’s bodies to personal property.
It seems like there’s a paradox about attacking analogies: if you say “Here are examples of Argument by Analogy not being valid, so your Argument by Analogy is not valid”, you’re engaging in Argument by Analogy yourself. It’s also not clear what the point of mentioning the airplanes with beaks is. If people were saying “Birds have beaks, therefore planes must need beaks”, that would be poor logic, but if people were saying “Birds have beaks, so we should try beaks”, that’s quite reasonable. It’s all well and good to look with hindsight at people trying something that turned out to not be right and laugh at how silly they are, but being willing to try out different hypotheses even if people are going to think you look silly if the hypotheses are wrong is an important skill.
EY keeps adding the qualifier “surface” to the term “similarities”, but that’s largely begging the question. “Analogies based on invalid bases are invalid” is a bit of a tautology.
It’s also frustrating how people insist on pretending that analogies are comparing the elements of the analogy, rather the relationship between the elements. For instance, SSM advocates argued that the Full Faith and Credit clause compelled states to recognize SSMs from other states. Obama pointed out that there was case law saying that states don’t have to recognize marriages that violate their age of consent or consanguinity laws. Dan Savage then proceeded to accuse Obama of comparing homosexuality to pedophilia and incest. Make comparisons between robbery and rape, and feminists will accuse you of comparing women’s bodies to personal property.