Analogical Argument Research Articles

Should vegans have children? A response to Räsänen

Joona Räsänen argues that vegans ought to be anti-natalists and therefore abstain from having children. More precisely, Räsänen claims that vegans who accept a utilitarian or rights-based argument for veganism, ought to, by parity of reasoning, accept an analogous argument for anti-natalism. In this paper, I argue that the reasons vegans have for refraining from purchasing animal products do not commit them to abstaining from having children. I provide novel arguments to the following conclusion: while there is good reason to believe that factory farming results in a net disutility and involves treating non-human animals as mere means, there is not good reason to believe that having children results in a net disutility or involves treating the children as mere means. Subsequently, I respond to what I take to be Räsänen’s underlying reasoning—that vegans are committed to abstaining from other practices which cause unnecessary suffering. I respond by arguing that this is plausibly false as various practices which cause unnecessary suffering are likely permissible, whereas factory farming is not.

Analogías para asustar y tranquilizar: dos estudios sobre recuperación y evaluación de argumentos analógicos

In our daily lives we often resort to argumentation through analogies when we try to show others our position on the issue at hand. Two experiments that analyze the retrieval and evaluation of analogical arguments with different argumentative purposes are reported in this article. In Experiment 1, the structure and semantic distance of analogies retrieved by 109 university students were analyzed when different communication purposes were indicated. It was found that people recover analogies with complete structure (i.e. analogies with explicit inferences) and close semantic distance to a greater extent. In Experiment 2 it was inquired if the types of analogies recovered in the previous experiment are effective (i.e., persuasive) for the recipient. The data found show a significant difference in their persuasive efficacy in favor of the arguments in which complete analogies are used.

The Distinctiveness Problem of Analogical Arguments

The orthodox view holds that analogical arguments are a distinctive type of argument, while the eliminative view and its enhanced variant proposed in this paper contend that analogical arguments can be reducible to non-analogical arguments by eliminating the similarities proposition. This paper shows that the existing defense for the orthodox view fails to tackle the challenge posed by the eliminative view and its enhanced variant. The new defense for the distinctiveness of analogical arguments argues that an analogical argument is composed of both a conductive and principle-based argument. Consequently, analogical arguments remain irreducible, as the similarities proposition is not eliminated.

Evaluating the use of casuistry during moral case deliberation in the ICU: A multiple qualitative case study

Intensive care unit (ICU) professionals engage in ethical decision making under conditions of high stakes, great uncertainty, time-sensitivity and frequent irreversibility of action. Casuistry is a way by which actionable knowledge is obtained through comparing a patient case to previous cases from experience in clinical practice. However, within the field of study as well as in practice, evidence-based medicine is the dominant epistemic framework. This multiple case study evaluated the use of casuistic reasoning by intensive care unit (ICU) professionals during moral case deliberation. It took place in two Dutch hospitals between June 2020 and June 2022. Twentyfive moral case deliberations from ICU practice were recorded and analyzed using discourse analysis. Additionally, 47 interviews were held with ICU professionals who participated in these deliberations, analyzed using thematic analysis. We found that ICU professionals made considerable use of case comparisons when discussing continuation, withdrawal or limitation. Analogies played a role in justifying or complicating moral judgements, and also played a role in addressing moral distress. The language of case-based arguments is most often not overtly normative. Rather, the data shows that casuistic reasoning deals with the medical, ethical and contextual elements of decisions in an integrated manner. Facilitators of MCD have an essential role in (supporting ICU professionals in) scrutinizing casuistic arguments. The data shows that during MCD, actual reasoning often deviated from principle- and rule-based reasoning which ICU professionals preferred themselves. Evidence-based arguments often gained the character of analogical arguments, especially when a patient-at-hand was seen as highly unique from the average patients in the literature. Casuistic arguments disguised as evidence-based arguments may therefore provide ICU professionals with a false sense of certainty. Within education, we should strive to train clinicians and ethics facilitators so that they can recognize and evaluate casuistic arguments.

Strategic manoeuvring of argumentation in Chinese corporate public relations discourses

Undertaking chairmen’s letters as data, the article discusses strategic manoeuvring of argumentation in Chinese corporate public relations discourses from the perspectives of topical potential, audience demand and presentational devices. Popular topics chosen were explored, including corporate commerciality, legitimation, entrepreneurship and approachability. Additionally, argumentation move structure and schemes such as symptomatic argument, analogy argument and causal argument were analysed. Inference modes undertaking priori, empirical and evaluative knowledge to respond to audiences’ rational, credibility and affective appeals were investigated. Presentational devices including allusion, metaphor and hypallage were also discussed. These findings were attributed to institutional and social-cultural contexts of the discourse. Hopefully, the study can enhance the explanatory power and applicability of the Pragma-Dialectics in corporate discourse studies and facilitate the research on Chinese corporate communication in general.

Argumentation, Metaphor, and Analogy

A “good” arguer is like an architect with a penchant for civil and civic engineering. Such an arguer can design and present their reasons artfully about a variety of topics, as good architects do with a plenitude of structures and in various environments. Failures in this are rarely hidden for long, as poor constructions reveal themselves, often spectacularly, so collaboration among civical engineers can be seen as a virtue. Our logical virtues should be analogous. When our arguments fail due to being uncivil and demagogic, since we inhabit the arguments we build, we are all crushed beneath our flawed reasoning. This mixed metaphor takes us to a self-referential analysis of argumentation, analogy, and humor. I argue that good argumentation strives to collaboratively convince rather than belligerently persuade. A convincing means toward this end is through humorous analogical arguments, whether the matter at hand is ethical, logical, theological, phenomenological, epistemological, metaphysical, political, or about baseball.

The Rough with the Smooth of the Light Cone String

The polynomials in the generators of a unitary representation of the Poincaré group constitute an algebra which maps the dense subspace D\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\mathcal D$$\\end{document} of smooth, rapidly decreasing wavefunctions to itself. This mathematical result is highly welcome to physicists, who previously just assumed their algebraic treatment of unbounded operators be justified. The smoothness, however, has the side effect that a rough operator R, which does not map a dense subspace of D\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\\mathcal D$$\\end{document} to itself, has to be shown to allow for some other dense domain which is mapped to itself both by R and all generators. Otherwise their algebraic product, their concatenation, is not defined. Canonical quantization of the light cone string postulates operators -iX1\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$-\ extrm{i}X^1$$\\end{document} and P-=(P0-Pz)/2\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$P^-=(P^0 - P^z)/2$$\\end{document} and as their commutator the multiplicative operator R=P1/(P0+Pz)\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$R=P^1/(P^0 + P^z)$$\\end{document}. This is not smooth but rough on the negative z-\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$z-$$\\end{document}axis of massless momentum. Using only the commutation relations of Pm\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$P^m$$\\end{document} with the generators -iMiz\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$-\ extrm{i}M_{iz}$$\\end{document} of rotations in the Pi\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$P^i$$\\end{document}-Pz\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$P^{z}$$\\end{document}-plane we show that on massless states the operator R is inconsistent with a unitary representation of SO(D-1)\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$(D-1)$$\\end{document}. This makes the algebraic determination of the critical dimension, D=26\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$D=26$$\\end{document}, of the bosonic string meaningless: if the massless states of the light cone string admit R then they do not admit a unitary representation of the subgroup SO(D-1)\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$(D-1)$$\\end{document} of the Poincaré group. With analogous arguments we show: Massless multiplets are inconsistent with a translation group of the spatial momentum which is generated by a self-adjoint spatial position operator X\\documentclass[12pt]{minimal} \\usepackage{amsmath} \\usepackage{wasysym} \\usepackage{amsfonts} \\usepackage{amssymb} \\usepackage{amsbsy} \\usepackage{mathrsfs} \\usepackage{upgreek} \\setlength{\\oddsidemargin}{-69pt} \\begin{document}$$\ extbf{X}$$\\end{document}.

A disjointed account of the illusion of auditory continuity: in favor of hearing everyday sounds but against hearing semantic properties

ABSTRACT I will investigate the auditory illusion of continuity, which is the phenomenon of auditory occlusion in which we are able to hear a sound as continuous even though it has been masked by another sound. This phenomenon seems to have a perceptual nature when it occurs in the context of everyday sounds, while it seems to have a cognitive nature when it occurs in the context of speech sounds. This difference has the following consequences: (1) We need to have a differentiated approach to the study of this phenomenon; (2) the perceptual explanation of the phenomenon involving everyday sounds indicates that everyday sounds can be auditorily perceived; and (3) the cognitive explanation of the phenomenon involving speech sounds suggests, instead, that semantic properties cannot be auditorily perceived. From (2) and (3) it follows that while we have a good argument for the rich view when focusing on everyday sounds, we seem to lack an analogous argument to support the rich view in the context of speech sounds. Thus, I will suggest a new argument for the view that we do not hear semantic properties, as language understanding seems to be primarily a cognitive ability.

THE BENEFITS AND PROTECTION OF CHILDREN IN DETERMINATION OF GUARDIANSHIP (A CASE STUDY OF DETERMINATION OF THE SHARIA COURT OF BANDA ACEH NUMBER 2/PDT.P/2021/MS.BNA)

Determination of The Sharia Court Of Banda Aceh Number 2/Pdt.P/2021/MS.Bna, which determines the biological mother as the guardian of her biological child, causes a legal conflict. On the one hand, based on the provisions of Article 47 of the Marriage Law, the biological mother, as the parent, represents the child in carrying out legal actions. On the other hand, based on this determination, the biological mother as guardian represents the child in legal actions. This research explains the method of legal discovery and legal considerations in determining guardianship. This research is normative legal research. Secondary data sources come from books, texts, journals, magazines, newspapers, documents, laws and regulations, etc. Research findings show that in the Determination Of The Sharia Court Of Banda Aceh Number 2/Pdt.P/2021/MS.Bna, the judge has carried out a legal construction of analogous arguments, namely Article 47 of the Marriage Law, which cannot resolve the case. However, the events faced in substance it is similar to other regulations related to guardianship, so when Article 47 of the Marriage Law cannot resolve the problem, this provision can be waived. An applicant who is able and has good faith in taking care of himself and the assets of the child who will be under his guardianship in the best possible way and solely for the benefit or benefit of the child, in the perspective of child protection theory, is entitled to be granted guardianship rights. In the Determination Of The Sharia Court Of Banda Aceh Number 2/Pdt.P/2021/MS.Bna there is benefit and harm, what becomes madarat is that if the petition is rejected, the child is abandoned because there is no one to take care of themselves and their property, while what becomes maslahah is if the petition is granted by appointing the Petitioner as the guardian of their children, then the objectives of the Shari’a can be fulfilled, namely take care of the soul of the child and protect the property of the child.

Case Study of Contextual and Emotional Modulation of Source-case Selection in Analogical Arguments

In making analogical arguments about actions, is more similarity between the source and target cases always better? No: all things considered, more similarity is not always better, even if the similarities are all relevant. The reason is that the context of the argument, including emotional considerations, modulates the selection of the source case to service the goals of the argument. If the goals of the argument include persuasion and even modifying someone’s emotional state, increasing the overall similarity between the source and target may be counterproductive.

Much ado about ontological nihilism

ABSTRACT According to ontological nihilism nothing exists. A recent argument purports to show that this view is indefensible, since its most plausible formulations are tacitly committed to quantificational claims that are inconsistent with the nihilist's view that there aren't any existents. I show that this objection begs the question against the nihilist. The objector's argument relies on an equivalence principle implying that claims which nihilists regard as non-quantificational should nonetheless be interpreted as equivalent to quantified claims, given that both kinds of assertion are assertible in the same contexts. This style of reasoning is supported by considerations of charity, which suggest that similarities in inter-personal patterns of language use provide evidence of similarity in the semantic content of speakers' utterances. However, related considerations also suggest that intra-personal patterns of language use constitute significant semantic evidence of the same kind. When we appreciate this and further recognize that nihilists are disposed to assert the negation of any positive, quantified claim, we see that it is too much to expect principles of semantic interpretation based on considerations of charity to decisively refute nihilism. This result has interesting metametaphysical implications concerning the role and scope of analogous arguments based on principles of interpretive charity.

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Langevin analogy between particle trajectories and polymer configurations.

A diffusive trajectory drawn by the generalized Langevin equation(GLE) for a colloidal particle evokes a random fractal of a static polymer configuration. This article proposes a static GLE-like description that enables the generation of a single configuration of a polymer chain with the noise formulated to satisfy the static fluctuation-response relation (FRR) along a one-dimensional chain structure but not along a temporal coordinate. A remarkable point is qualitative differences and similarities in the FRR formulation between the static and the dynamic GLEs. Guided by the static FRR, we further make analogous arguments in light of stochastic energetics and the steady-state fluctuation theorem.

The Etiquette of Equality

The Etiquette of Equality

Expressivism, Pluralism, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “A Suggestion on the Negro Problem”

Expressivism, Pluralism, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “A Suggestion on the Negro Problem”

On ‘Anti-Speciesism’ as an Aim in Education

In this reply to the special issue 'Animals in Education', Kelly Swope raises two challenges to the consensus that ‘speciesism’ is the problem for which ‘anti-speciesist education’ is the solution. The first, which Swope calls the indoctrination challenge, comes out of his engagement with Kai Horsthemke’s article, in which the author defends the meaningfulness – and by extension, the pedagogical potency – of the term speciesism against several objections. The second, which Swope calls the alienation challenge, addresses a moment in Reingard Spannring’s article in which the author attempts an analogical argument that reveals the difficulty of grounding ‘critical animal pedagogy’ in a critique of speciesism. After offering these challenges, Swope concludes that organized educational interventions aimed at moving human-animal relations in a liberatory direction should shift their focus from undoing speciesism to studying how our world as currently structured prevents both human beings and nonhuman animals from growing up and flourishing.

“Biafrans Are Not Nazis:” The Biafran Humanitarian Disaster and Trudeau’s Analogies

During the Nigeria-Biafra War, the Nigerian government employed shooting and economic blockade as powerful instruments of uniting the country and defending its territorial integrity. Starvation as a potent weapon was of a magnitude that arguably made it the worst catastrophe since the Second World War. The tension was between sovereignty and human rights. Public opinion in Canada strongly favored humanitarian support for Biafra, but the Canadian government argued that humanitarian aid for Biafra might be offensive to the Nigerian government. This article examines the attitude of Pierre Trudeau to the Biafran humanitarian crisis. It argues that Trudeau’s analogical arguments did not represent the true situation of the war. Although Trudeau’s reliance on information from the Commonwealth secretariat affected his understanding of the crisis, his policies were largely influenced by domestic political issues, particularly the Quebec separatist movement. The paper concludes that Canada’s foreign policy reviews that coincided with the Nigeria–Biafra War informed Trudeau’s kneejerk response to the Biafran humanitarian crisis.

Inspiring imagination – embarrassing analogies: coping with the causes of cytoplasmic streaming

ABSTRACT In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the observation of a phenomenon that we call today cyclosis or cytoplasmic streaming provoked great astonishment, and also raised great expectations of being able to penetrate into the secrets of living matter. From the outset, the steady circling flow of liquids and granules inside the cells of algae posed an explanatory challenge, because it seemed to contradict the laws of physics. With scarce epistemic support at hand, researchers adopted a series of analogies to give plausibility to their conclusions. None of these enjoyed lasting success. On the contrary, over the years, we can observe an ongoing proliferation of explanations, and a diversification of alleged mechanisms and agents. Moreover, all the adduced analogies were severely criticized by scientific contemporaries; several were even subjected to derision. Nevertheless, it seemed that nobody could do without them. This paper will focus on the period 1774–1840, and will analyze the contributions and analogical arguments of some prominent microscopists of the time, among them Bonaventura Corti, Charles Bonnet, Ludolph Christian Treviranus, Carl Heinrich Schultz-Schultzenstein, Giovanni Battista Amici, Henri Dutrochet, and Franz Meyen.

Moral underdetermination and a new skeptical challenge

In this paper, I introduce a new challenge to moral realism: the skeptical argument from moral underdetermination. The challenge arises as a consequence of two recent projects in normative ethics. Both Parfit (On what matters, vol 1. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011a) and a group called consequentializers have independently claimed that the main traditions of normative theories can agree on the set of correct particular deontic verdicts. Nonetheless, as Dietrich and List (Philos Rev 126(4):421–479, 2017) and myself (Baumann in J Ethics Soc Philos 13(3):191–221, 2018; Australas J Philos 97(3):511–527, 2019; Ethical Theory Moral Pract 24(4):999–1018, 2021a) have argued, the traditions still disagree about why these are the correct verdicts. This means that we can understand the situation in terms of an idea from the philosophy of science, the underdetermination of theory by the evidence. Yet underdetermination figures in one of the most important skeptical challenges to scientific realism. I show how an analogous skeptical argument can be construed for the moral realm. I propose a standard form for that argument. I then defend it against three possible objections, arguing that it is at least as plausible as, if not more plausible than, its counterpart in the philosophy of science.

Analogical Arguments in the Kalām Tradition: Abū l-Maꜥālī al-Juwaynī and Beyond

This article examines the development and critique of analogical arguments in the kalām tradition. There are two basic positions on analogical arguments: (i) one holds that if analogical arguments yield certainty, then they are analyzable as deductive inferences, rendering the analogy itself redundant. Proponents of this view thus hold that if the analogy is useful at all, it will never yield the certainty demanded in the rational sciences; (ii) another holds that the analogy remains useful even when the argument is deductively sound, either because the universal premise is epistemically dependent on the source case, or, because the source case is useful in dialectical contexts. The exploration of these themes will center around Juwaynī’s formalization and subsequent critique of analogical arguments in the kalām tradition.