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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   31616 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 17, 2022

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I think there are three problems here.

First, argument-by-analogy is a poor strategy generally, because analogies often work as an attempt to explain a position, but not as an attempt to persuade. If you're trying to persuade, the other person can always point out differences between the object case and the analogy (there are always differences, otherwise it's not an analogy), and then you're just arguing over whether a given difference is material.

Second, abortion is an unusually distinct object case. In most cases, you can say "this is really close to that, so we should treat them similarly" and objections concern whether you're jumping an important line in the process. But there aren't other object cases that are "pretty close" to abortion; when you're comparing it to a different thing, it's not hard to come up with multiple distinctions that might justify different treatment.

Third, the fundamental values involved in any given position in the abortion context are right there. There just aren't many inferential steps from values to policy for mistake theory to have room to maneuver; it's all conflict of values. At that point, it's down to persuasion that one set of values is preferable to another, and appeals to, say, emotion or aesthetics are perfectly valid argument types.

because analogies often work as an attempt to explain a position, but not as an attempt to persuade

Huh? How are these different? If you listen to political speeches or debates, both often attempts to persuade, there are tons of analogies.

Let's say I'm making an argument, and the other person doesn't understand what I'm getting at. Quite often, I could use some shared reference point as an analogy to make my line of argument more clear.

Alternatively, I'm making an argument, and the other person firmly disagrees. I could use an analogy, but it usually won't be persuasive, because analogies are never perfect 1:1 matches to the original subject, and the other person can just say, "oh, your analogy is different here and that's a material difference, so your analogy is flawed and not good support for your position."

it's rare for someone to disagree, hear an analogy, and respond, "oh, I was wrong the whole time, but now I agree." If the other person was on the fence beforehand, and not committed to disagreeing? Might work.

I could use an analogy, but it usually won't be persuasive, because analogies are never perfect 1:1 matches to the original subject,

But they don't have to be. They just have to be relevant in some way to be convincing.

Obviously the interlocutor can just say "but apples aren't LITERALLY orange, checkmate republikkan", but they can do that for any argument that isn't an analogy.

it's rare for someone to disagree, hear an analogy, and respond, "oh, I was wrong the whole time, but now I agree

Yeah, but that's also true for non-analogy arguments. Analogies and similar things are plenty useful in persuading people who firmly disagree, but it's generally hard to do so.

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