The Cumulative Force of Analogies

• Authors: Botting David
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

In this paper I will argue that most objections to deductive analyses of a priori analogies are incorrect, often involve basic misinterpretations of what the deductive reconstruction of those arguments are saying, and sometimes also betray a confusion about what part of the reasoning corresponds to the analogical inference. In particular, I will be focusing on a raft of objections made by Juthe in [2015] and subject his alternative views to criticism. I will then argue that Juthe does implicitly have a good argument against deductivism: adding further analogues seems to have a cumulative force that they would not have on a deductivist analysis. This is so not only in ordinary analogical arguments but, perhaps surprisingly, with a priori analogical arguments. I will then argue that this does not favor a sui generis view of the analogical argument over inductivist views, and attempt to show that a confirmation-theoretic approach to analogical inference makes the best sense of our intuitions about the strength of analogical arguments.

Keywords

EN

arguments by analogy; a priori analogy; deductivism; complex analogies; inferential strength

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Mikołaja Kopernika (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń)
• Journal: Logic and Logical Philosophy
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 27
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 105–141

Dates

published

2018-03-15

Contributors

author

Botting David

• Instituto de Filosofia da Nova, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, 26-C Av. de Berna, 1069-061 Lisboa, Portugal

References

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Identifiers

DOI

10.12775/LLP.2017.011