5.3 Refutation by Analogy

We can use arguments from analogy for a specific logical task: refuting someone else’s argument, showing that it’s bad. Recall the case of deductive arguments. To refute those—to show that they are bad, i.e., invalid—we had to produce a counterexample—a new argument with the same logical form as the original that was obviously invalid, in that its premises were in fact true and its conclusion in fact false. We can use a similar procedure to refute inductive arguments. Of course, the standard of evaluation is different for induction: we don’t judge them according to the black-and-white standard of validity. And as a result, our judgments have less to do with form than with content. Nevertheless, refutation along similar lines is possible, and analogies are the key to the technique.

To refute an inductive argument, we produce a new argument that’s obviously bad—just as we did in the case of deduction. We don’t have a precise notion of logical form for inductive arguments, so we can’t demand that the refuting argument have the same form as the original; rather, we want the new argument to have an analogous form to the original. The stronger the analogy between the refuting and refuted arguments, the more decisive the refutation. We cannot produce the kind of knock-down refutations that were possible in the case of deductive arguments, where the standard of evaluation—validity—does not admit to degrees of goodness or badness, but the technique can be quite effective. Let’s look at a few illustrations.

Example 1

Consider the following (excerpted from Austin Faulds, “Weird celebrity endorsements fit for weird election,” Indiana Daily Student, 10/12/16,  http://www.idsnews.com/article/2016/10/weird-celebrity-endorsements-for-weird-election ):

The author in this example is refuting the argument of Willie Robertson, the “Duck Dynasty” star. Robertson’s argument is something like this: ‘Trump is a successful businessman and reality TV star; therefore, he would be a good president’. To refute this, the author produces an analogous argument— ‘Hugh Hefner is a successful businessman and reality TV star; therefore, Hugh Hefner would make a good president’. He regards the analogous argument as obviously bad. What makes it obviously bad is that it has a conclusion that nobody would agree with, that Hugh Hefner would make a good president. That’s how these refutations work. They attempt to demonstrate that the original argument is atrocious by showing that you can use the same or very similar reasoning to arrive at an absurd conclusion.

Example 2

The following text, from a group called Iowans for Public Education, is next to a picture of an apparently well-to-do lady:

The argument that Iowans for Public Education put in the mouth of the lady on the poster is meant to refute reasoning used by advocates for school choice, who say that they ought to have the right to opt out of public education and keep the tax dollars they would otherwise pay for public schools and use it to pay to send their kids to private schools. A similar line of reasoning sounds pretty crazy when you replace public schools with public parks and private schools with country clubs.

Since these sorts of refutations rely on analogies, they are only as strong as the analogy between the refuting and refuted arguments. There is room for dispute on that question. Advocates for school vouchers might point out that schools and parks are completely different things, that schools are much more important to the future prospects of children, and that given the importance of education, families should have to right choose what they think is best. Or something like that. The point is, the kinds of knock-down refutations that were possible for deductive arguments are not possible for inductive arguments. There is always room for further debate.

Example 3

From this website —https://www.mpp.org/issues/legalization/effective-arguments-for-regulating-and-taxing-marijuana/ — here’s an analogical refutation for public policy positions and laws that allow adults to use alcohol and punish them for using cannabis, a less harmful substance:

Given a context of full scientific accounting of the medical and sociological factors surrounding the use of both alcohol and cannabis, the analogy is making a case involving personal freedom. Whether one chooses cannabis or alcohol as a recreational drug is likened to choosing chicken over beef, or beer over hard liquor. While this refuting argument may seem convincing to some, others disagree, and the debate surrounding the legalization of cannabis continues to be contentious.

Example 4

Analogical arguments and accompanying refutations come up frequently in moral debates where the right answers can be especially elusive. This first passage is from a letter to the editor raising the question about medical resources:

The following text is from a letter written in response to the letter above):

While the initial letter focused on a hypothesized dissimilarity between the patients, the refutation raises the possibility of those two patients contending for the ICU bed may not be as dissimilar as described. Perhaps the cardiac patient too could be suffering bad health outcomes stemming from personal choices she made, and perhaps personal choices should not be a criterion for prioritizing the use of medical resources. Moral issues are especially thorny and open to dispute. Still use of analogies and dis-analogies can be helpful in making strong points.