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Ethic Theory Moral Prac (2014) 17:861874
DOI 10.1007/s10677-013-9484-6
Georg Spielthenner
Accepted: 16 December 2013 /Published online: 15 January 2014 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014
Abstract In this article I am concerned with analogical reasoning in ethics. There is no doubt that the use of analogy can be a powerful tool in our ethical reasoning. The importance of this mode of reasoning is therefore commonly accepted, but there is considerable debate concerning how its structure should be understood and how it should be assessed, both logically and epistemically. In this paper, I first explain the basic structure of arguments from analogy in ethics. I then discuss the diversity of analogical arguments that can be found in ethics. I analyse their structure, assess them from a logical viewpoint, and show how they can be epistemically challenged and defended. The result of this investigation is that, contrary to a commonly held view, analogical reasoning can be a logically valid type of ethical reasoning that can provide reasons for action that are not worse than the reasons provided by any other kind of practical reasoning.
Keywords Analogicalarguments.Analogicalreasoning.Analogy.Ethicalreasoning.Practical reasoning
Analogy has been a contested concept in the history of philosophy and many competing accounts of its structure and significance have been offered.1 One reason for this is that analogies come in several forms and serve different functions, which it is important to keep apart. In particular, we need to distinguish between using analogies argumentatively and non-argumentatively. Since earliest times, analogy was used for the purposes of illustration and explanation by making something unfamiliar more intelligible through comparison with something more well-knownfor instance, when a teacher draws an analogy between a human heart and a pump (Sacksteder 1974). This figurative use is also common in ethics. Some writers hold that it can
1The Latin term analogia is a loan word of the Greek noun (analogia), which originally referred to the mathematical concept of proportione.g., when it is said that 8 is to 2 as 4 is to 1. However, philosophers soon extended the term proportion to mean any relation and the term proportionality to mean a similarity between relations of any kind; and it was this extended conception of analogy that became influential in the history of philosophical and theological...