Analogies
When analysing and evaluating arguments you will need to be able to recognise various techniques used and how reliable they make the argument. One technique that we will look at is analogies.
Analogical thinking is used regularly and can be very useful, perhaps especially, in science. For example, if we try out drugs on a chimpanzee we can assume that there will be a similar effect on humans.
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This kind of analogical thinking is reliable because the analogy is strong - humans and chimpanzees are similar. However, if we first tested the drugs on reptile or fish this would not be a good analogy.
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The Teleological Argument for the existence of God is an example of an analogical argument. You can see this below.
This argument (on the right) is unreliable as the analogy between dogs and humans is not strong.
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When evaluating analogical arguments you should consider if the analogy is a good one or not.
False
Analogy
Dogs have hair and we know they are descended from wolves. Humans also have hair and so they too much be descended from wolves.
Types
There are two different types of analogy:
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Lexical
Ambiguity
The presence of two or more different meanings in a single word.
Syntactic
Ambiguity
A situation where a sentence may be interpreted in more than one way due to the ambiguous sentence structure.
Tasks
Using what you have just learnt complete the following tasks.
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There are copies on your GoogleClassroom.