Analogical arguments (Dr. Van Cleave)

By Matthew Van Cleave

Another kind of common inductive argument is an argument from analogy.  In an argument from analogy, we note that since some thing x shares similar properties to some thing y, then since y has characteristic A, x probably has characteristic A as well.  For example, suppose that I have always owned Subaru cars in the past and that they have always been reliable and I argue that the new car I’ve just purchased will also be reliable because it is a Subaru.  The two things in the analogy are 1) the Subarus I have owned in the past and 2) the current Subaru I have just purchased.  The similarity between these two things is just that they are both Subarus.  Finally, the conclusion of the argument is that this Subaru will share the characteristic of being reliable with the past Subarus I have owned.  Is this argument a strong or weak inductive argument?  Partly it depends on how many Subarus I’ve owned in the past.  If I’ve only owned one, then the inference seems fairly weak (perhaps I was just lucky in that one Subaru I’ve owned).  If I’ve owned ten Subarus then the inference seems much stronger.  Thus, the reference class that I’m drawing on (in this case, the number of Subarus I’ve previously owned) must be large enough to generalize from (otherwise we would be committing the fallacy of “hasty generalization”).  However, even if our reference class was large enough, what would make the inference even stronger is knowing not simply that the new car is a Subaru, but also specific things about its origin.  For example, if I know that this particular model has the same engine and same transmission as the previous model I owned and that nothing significant has changed in how Subarus are made in the intervening time, then my argument is strengthened.  In contrast, if this new Subaru was made after Subaru was bought by some other car company, and if the engine and transmission were actually made by this new car company, then my argument is weakened.  It should be obvious why: the fact that the car is still called “Subaru” is not relevant establishing that it will have the same characteristics as the other cars that I’ve owned that were called “Subarus.”  Clearly, what the car is called has no inherent relevance to whether the car is reliable.  Rather, what is relevant to whether the car is reliable is the quality of the parts and assembly of the car.  Since it is possible that car companies can retain their name and yet drastically alter the quality of the parts and assembly of the car, it is clear that the name of the car isn’t itself what establishes the quality of the car.  Thus, the original argument, which invoked merely that the new car was a Subaru is not as strong as the argument that the car was constructed with the same quality parts and quality assembly as the other cars I’d owned (and that had been reliable for me).  What this illustrates is that better arguments from analogy will invoke more relevant similarities between the things being compared in the analogy.  This is a key condition for any good argument from analogy: the similar characteristics between the two things cited in the premises must be relevant to the characteristic cited in the conclusion. 

Here is an ethical argument that is an argument from analogy.¹ Suppose that Bob uses his life savings to buy an expensive sports car.  One day Bob parks his car and takes a walk along a set of train tracks.  As he walks, he sees in the distance a small child whose leg has become caught in the train tracks.  Much to his alarm, he sees a train coming towards the child.  Unfortunately, the train will reach the child before he can (since it is moving very fast) and he knows it will be unable to stop in time and will kill the child.  At just that moment, he sees a switch near him that he can throw to change the direction of the tracks and divert the train onto another set of tracks so that it won’t hit the child.  Unfortunately, Bob sees that he has unwittingly parked his car on that other set of tracks and that if he throws the switch, his expensive car will be destroyed.  Realizing this, Bob decides not to throw the switch and the train strikes and kills the child, leaving his car unharmed.  What should we say of Bob?  Clearly, that was a horrible thing for Bob to do and we would rightly judge him harshly for doing it.  In fact, given the situation described, Bob would likely be criminally liable.  Now consider the following situation in which you, my reader, likely find yourself (whether you know it or not—well, now you do know it).  Each week you spend money on things that you do not need.  For example, I sometimes buy $5 espressos from Biggby’s or Starbuck’s.  I do not need to have them and I could get a much cheaper caffeine fix, if I chose to (for example, I could make a strong cup of coffee at my office and put sweetened hazelnut creamer in it).  In any case, I really don’t need the caffeine at all!  And yet I regularly purchase these $5 drinks.  (If $5 drinks aren’t the thing you spend money on, but in no way need, then fill in the example with whatever it is that fits your own life.)  With the money that you could save from forgoing these luxuries, you could, quite literally, save a child’s life.  Suppose (to use myself as an example) I were to buy two $5 coffees a week (a conservative estimate).  That is $10 a week, roughly $43 a month and $520 a year.  Were I to donate that amount (just $40/month) to an organization such as the Against Malaria Foundation, I could save a child’s life in just six years.² Given these facts, and comparing these two scenarios (Bob’s and your own), the argument from analogy proceeds like this:

The two things being compared here are Bob’s situation and our own.  The argument then proceeds by claiming that since we judge what Bob did to be morally wrong, and since our situation is analogous to Bob’s in relevant respects (i.e., choosing to have luxury items for ourselves rather than saving the lives of dying children), then our actions of purchasing luxury items for ourselves must be morally wrong for the same reason.

One way of arguing against the conclusion of this argument is by trying to argue that there are relevant disanalogies between Bob’s situation and our own.  For example, one might claim that in Bob’s situation, there was something much more immediate he could do to save the child’s life right then and there.  In contrast, our own situation is not one in which a child that is physically proximate to us is in imminent danger of death, where there is something we can immediately do about it.  One might argue that this disanalogy is enough to show that the two situations are not analogous and that, therefore, the conclusion does not follow.  Whether or not this response to the argument is adequate, we can see that the way of objecting to an argument from analogy is by trying to show that there are relevant differences between the two things being compared in the analogy.  For example, to return to my car example, even if the new car was a Subaru and was made under the same conditions as all of my other Subarus, if I purchased the current Subaru used, whereas all the other Subarus had been purchased new, then that could be a relevant difference that would weaken the conclusion that this Subaru will be reliable.

So we’ve seen that an argument from analogy is strong only if the following two conditions are met:

Arguments from analogy that meet these two conditions will tend to be stronger inductive arguments.

Do Quiz 4c before moving further in the course.