tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8070355695530434450.post3496432673001535935..comments2024-03-14T04:16:20.472-07:00Comments on In Socrates' Wake: Helping students with analogical reasoningMichael Cholbihttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02012523929044363216noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8070355695530434450.post-26213959794579033642008-12-09T05:52:00.000-08:002008-12-09T05:52:00.000-08:00There is a useful explanation of this type of argu...There is a useful explanation of this type of argument in an anthology by David Boonin and Graham Oddie, "What's Wrong?: Applied Ethicists and their Critics". My own brief summary of this:<BR/><BR/>Applied Ethics and the Use of Analogies<BR/><BR/>How are analogies used in moral philosophy?<BR/>Philosophers attempt to justify accepting a moral assessment about a practice by comparing it with another practice about which most people already agree.<BR/><BR/>Why do philosophers use these types of arguments?<BR/>Philosophers use these in order to resolve a controversial issue by framing it in terms of a less controversial one.<BR/><BR/><BR/>Critically Evaluating Such Arguments<BR/><BR/>1. Challenge the author’s assessment of the “agreed upon” example.<BR/>2. Identify a disanalogy between the example and the issue it is applied to.<BR/>-identify a difference and show that it is morally relevant. <BR/><BR/>A Final Point <BR/>The use of such analogies may seem irrelevant, because they are often unrealistic, but the point of doing this is to keep the morally relevant issues present, while avoiding the influence of bias, emotion, and the like.Mike Austinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02489700864050607425noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8070355695530434450.post-61946025835802249682008-12-02T05:10:00.000-08:002008-12-02T05:10:00.000-08:00If you wish to assist you students in the process ...If you wish to assist you students in the process of analogical reasoning, then you are going to have to know their vocabulary. To do that you must have a grasp of their respective value systems. Once you know what is important to them, then you will be able to provide them with examples of analogical reasoning and they will be able to successfully employ their new found skill.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8070355695530434450.post-23082119195588246952008-12-01T10:29:00.000-08:002008-12-01T10:29:00.000-08:00As ItPF mentions in the first comment, charity is ...As ItPF mentions in the first comment, charity is vital, and a more general problem.<BR/><BR/>Charity can, I think, only be found where the goal is the search for truth. Absent the search for truth, debate devolves into nitpicking, a sales pitch, or even spamming the opponent with talking points.<BR/><BR/>Foster the habit among students of reformulating an opposing argument in the strongest way, if only to make sure it's clearly defeated.<BR/><BR/>A stop along the way might be argumentum ad logicam: just because an analogy fails to be persuasive doesn't mean that another analogy will not be.Loren Healhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03677878164691641842noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8070355695530434450.post-6627339415652013542008-12-01T06:48:00.000-08:002008-12-01T06:48:00.000-08:00I've had the same experience when teaching the Tho...I've had the same experience when teaching the Thomson article; the same thing also shows up when I discuss Singer's shallow pond case. What I generally try to do in those cases is to change the case a bit to determine whether the difference the students cite makes a moral difference. This strategy is employed very well in Unger's book "Living High and Letting Die".Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8070355695530434450.post-26189377906648259652008-11-30T19:30:00.000-08:002008-11-30T19:30:00.000-08:00This page from Richard Feldman on arguments from a...This page from Richard Feldman on arguments from analogies is quite good, IMHO:<BR/><A HREF="http://www.ling.rochester.edu/~feldman/philosophy105/09-analogies.html" REL="nofollow">http://www.ling.rochester.edu/~feldman/philosophy105/09-analogies.html</A><BR/><BR/>He has an, I guess, different take on what the point of an analogy is and so their role in arguments. Since his notes are easy to read, I won't summarize them.Nathan Nobishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12287299803300142069noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8070355695530434450.post-80796572270851241312008-11-30T18:17:00.000-08:002008-11-30T18:17:00.000-08:00I don't think your students are actually doing ver...I don't think your students are actually doing very badly; it's common enough, I think, to find professional philosophers doing the same thing. (At least, I run into it quite often in articles on Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.)<BR/><BR/>I'm inclined to think that part of the problem is that there is no agreed-upon account of analogical reasoning in the first place. If we take Hume's account of analogy (in the Treatise), for instance, it is impossible to undermine <I>analogies</I> (Hume actually allows one exception, but it rarely seems to come up): for (almost) any two things you could reason about, it is trivially true that they are analogous in some way. And, of course, where we have no independent information about the conclusion it is impossible to prove the conclusion false. So all you can do is to show the weakness of the inference -- and this is to be done not by showing differences between the analogues but <I>only</I> by running counter-inferences, i.e., inferences based on analogy that yield a contrary conclusion. (It could still be useful to find differences, of course, because these might be the beginnings of counter-inferences.) The ultimate conclusion drawn is based on taking into account all the inferences and all their counter-inferences. I find this a very plausible account, but when I try to convey it to colleagues, I find that they often split between people who think it almost trivially true, on the one side, and, on the other, people who think it obviously false and possibly incoherent. So perhaps the real trouble here is that we struggle with evaluating analogical inferences ourselves? Is there really a hard-and-fast way of refuting an analogical inference, short of simply demonstrating independently that the conclusion is false?Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8070355695530434450.post-46318857476374292962008-11-30T17:24:00.000-08:002008-11-30T17:24:00.000-08:00On occasion, I ask them to make their own argument...On occasion, I ask them to make their own arguments from analogy -- which gives them some charity in their interpretations of others... <BR/><BR/>Otherwise, I do what you seem to do -- in that I ask them why they think their objection to the analogy takes out the argument?Inside the Philosophy Factoryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12255753259090709877noreply@blogger.com