Judging Analogies

Analogies are really hard to analyze because unless the analogy is very clearly stated, we have to look at the similarities and guess the important ones in order to find a general principle that applies to both sides. These kinds of analogies are where you would say that one side of the analogy is like the other is too vague to use a premise.  Epstein gave us a set of question we could use to analyze and figure out analogies:

Questions you can use to help you when evaluating an analogy:

1. Is this an argument? What is a conclusion?

2. What is the comparison?

3. What are the premises? (one or both sides of the comparison)

4. What are the similarities?

5. Can we state that a similarity as premises and find a general principle that covers the two sides?

6. Does the general principle really apply to both sides? Do the differences matter?

7. Is the argument strong or valid? Is it good?

Now I am going to use the set of questions to evaluate an example analogy. An example of an analogy that Epstein gave us to analyze and understand is:

“Blaming soldiers for war is like blaming fireman for fires”.

For this analogy its argument is that neither soldiers start a war nor firemen start the fires. Its conclusion is that we should not be taking out our anger on the soldiers who are just there supporting our country in war but put it towards the people who actually initiated the war. The comparison is between fireman and soldiers job roles.  The premise is that we should not blame soldiers for the war. The similarities are that they both work to save people’s lives while putting themselves in danger to keep our country safe. The general principle of this analogy is that we should not judge people for their jobs just because you don’t agree with what there seem to be supporting. The general principle does apply to both sides the only difference is that firemen’s jobs of putting out fires don’t have the same controversy as the war does.  I would say that the argument is valid and strong because it makes people really stop and think about treat soldiers better and redirecting their complaints to higher powers. Overall I think this is a good argument.