Hey, terrans. How goes it? I hope the week treated you well. I mean terra often seems like a beautiful ball on fire, but if you're reading this, I hope the week treated you well. Around here, well, I just heard the bard do another one of my bits, and I kinda had words with him. “Listen you could just let people know where you get all that stuff from right? I mean you don't have to say, ‘here's another one by…' or anything. You could just give my stuff a name that refers to me. Call 'em p-ditties. Ok not that. Something else. But ya know?!?!” I must be upset. After I pen this letter, I may go burn off some steam slaying monsters in the forest, but first, I wanted to say hi and follow up on things in my last letter.

Last time, I talked analogy arguments. Well, apparently Plato was not a fan of them. “Arguments that make their point by means of similarities are impostors, and, unless you are on your guard against them, will quite readily deceive you.” Plato, calm down. You're taking it too far. (And since you're criticizing them by saying they are analogous to imposters, I will be on my guard lest you deceive me, you sneaky little rascal, you.)

Maybe it'd be helpful to see the working parts of these arguments, how the arguments work, and where things can go awry. I'm just thinking out loud here of course, but in the “Nuh uhn, that's like saying…” example from before, two things get compared, an initial claim and a counter-example. They are said to be similar in some significant way that ruins the original claim. Ok. So far, so good. Now, I can imagine two responses to that challenge: “No, that example's different because…” or “So? what's your point?” No or so. In other words, to challenge the either truth of similarity or its significance. Hmm. That's something. What else? Maybe an example will help.

Initial claim: “I'm a protester with freedom of speech, so you have no right to do anything about this, officer.”

meets:

Counter-example: “Nuh uhn! That's like saying I have no right to do anything about you yelling fire in a crowded theater!”

Other issues aside, is the counter-example similar in a mutually-falsifying way? Sure both cases involve speech, but that similarity is lame lame lame. The trouble with “Fire!” is not the speech but the spark of physical harm or (hopefully) just the disruption of a private event. Protesting isn't necessarily like that, but megaphoning someone to deaf is. The megaphoning, that has a potent similarity with yelling “Fire!”: aggression. So, because doing something about aggression is called for, the idea that nothing can be done gets defeated in both cases. Those cases are analogous with each other, but not with the protest one.

But I want to break it down more to really look at it in order to find the faulty bits. How….

More precisely, an initial claim is said to be like a given counter-example such that the counter's being faulty (false/absurd/incoherent/commie/Chubacha/whatever) means the original is too. Now, that much seems right. However, it also means this kind of argument is pretty IF'y . IF the original claim is like the counter-example in the given way and IF that is a potent (potentially disconfirming) way and IF the counter-example is faulty, THEN the original claim is also faulty. Hey that first IF goes with the No response above. And the others go with the So? response. That's something, too. It breaks down the No and So? a little bit.

Well, I've been thinking about this so long that I've missed my hunt! Maybe a quick critter on the way? We'll see.

Later.

– Pen

“This analogy is so weak it not only limps, as most analogies do, but it positively staggers around on one leg.” – Dr. Gerard Casey.

That Casey book, Libertarian Anarchy, found me idle and then that line made me laugh. I once heard analogies called the weakest form of argument, and that makes sense. But eh. They are also widely and effectively used. I figure they have some kind of force.

I'll back up. Reason is a part of us, as sentients, right? Some of us are better at it, and some of us are dwarves. (I kid.) (Trolls are the truly deficient ones, but I'm not going there right now.) My point is that while a terran philosopher can analyze inference for pages and pages and pages and… even children just reason, naturally. I remember, way back when, disagreeing with other kids, saying something like: “Nuh uh. That’s like saying…” and other kids did the same. When the challenged stupidity truly compared to the crazy in the absurd example, the analogy was a good point. Interestingly, I guess this defense of analogy has a bit of an analogy aspect to it too.

Dr. Catarina Dutilh Novaes says it well. In Argument and Argumentation (SEP) she writes, “Analogical arguments continue to occupy a central position in philosophical discussions, and a number of the most prominent philosophical arguments of the last decades are analogical arguments, e.g., Jarvis Thomson’s violinist argument purportedly showing the permissibility of abortion (Thomson 1971), and Searle’s Chinese Room argument purportedly showing that computers cannot display real understanding (see entry on the Chinese Room argument).” She goes on to show analogy’s prominence in the philosophical traditions of many terran cultures before summarizing, “while analogical arguments in general perhaps confer a lesser degree of conviction than the other three kinds of arguments discussed, they are widely used both in professional circles and in everyday life.”

So, they are weak arguments or at least they can be. But they're still useful, at least sometimes.

Well, I guess I better get back to work. Today, round one of hunting and gathering disappointed everyone. Now that the weather has cooled, I must show this forest what I am made of. I’d rather keep reading the Casey book, but I’ll probably get into it once I’m out there. Have a great weekend terrans.

– Pen