PPL 212 Lecture 16: Arguments from Analogy
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Arguments from analogy and inference to the best explanation. What best explains this fact: the dog did it. No competing hypothesis ts as well with my background and beliefs and other facts, so this is the best explanation: ibe pops up in science, psychology, linguistics, astronomy, archeology, even. Sherlock holmes: ibe is not deductive, so its defeasible. Accepting an explanation: if an explanation satis es these standards better than any other from a reasonable pool, you"re justi ed in accepting it. !1: inductive arguments that rely on the premise that two things are similar in certain respects to reach the conclusion that they must be similar in some further aspect. B has features w y z etc. So a probably has feature z too. Good analogies: the two things being compared should be similar in all signi cant aspects, the more situations with similar relevant features, the stronger the analogy and the stronger the argument.
