Talk:Analogy
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This article may be too technical for a general audience. Please help improve this article by providing more context and better explanations of technical details to make it more accessible, without removing technical details. |
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[edit] Update category?
Karol, you said that "philosophy" is too general a category. I could agree, but what do you suggest? Analogy comes to philosophy (1) from an argumentative tradition (in "logic", epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, legal theory...) and (2) from present day cognitive studies. It has also very strong (philosophical) connections to language and language related subjects. How should we put it? Actually, I'm starting to think that analogy is indeed a general philosophical subject... Velho 19:35, 10 November 2005 (UTC) Well, I'll change it to "Philosophical arguments"... Velho 19:56, 10 November 2005 (UTC)The
[edit] Different Strokes
TWIC ("To Whom It Concerns"), this business with the different arrow directions between source and target has been a headache as long as I can remember, and works against communication between the various traditions, not to mention befuddling novice and expert readers alike. I will work out a more neutral language for relating the different points of view. Jon Awbrey 16:48, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Copy edit
The first paragraph of this article made me cringe. It was so overly complex and difficult to understand:
| Analogy is both the cognitive process of transferring information from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target), and a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. In a narrower sense, analogy is an inference or an argument from a particular to another particular, as opposed to deduction, induction, and abduction, where at least one of the premises or the conclusion is general. The word analogy can also refer to the relation between the source and the target themselves, which is often, though not necessarily, a similarity, as in the biological notion of analogy. |
I changed the first paragraph to: Fuck all of you
| An analogy is the similarity between two things, which a comparison may be based. In biology it means to have a similar function but have a different structure and evolutionary origin.[1][2] |
The rest of the article probably reads just as badly, and is overly complex. I added the {{Copyedit}} tag.
As a law student, I read complex/nasty legislation and cases everyday. My job will be to interpret complex ideas and text. This paragraph was even difficult for me to understand.
Travb (talk) 14:48, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
- --Agreed, I am not sure if it was changed back or what, but the first paragraph is horrible. Even for those looking for more than a definition, that is quite a confusing and seemingly random way to start an article about a word commonly used to mean "comparison" (slightly simplified, but basically true).Mfergason 14:06, 8 June 2007 (UTC)
- I'm sure the wording can be improved, but please notice that analogy isn't comparison nor similarity. The word analogy is subject to Wiktionary. In Wikipedia the philosophical and cognitive science subjects of analogy must be addressed. Velho 13:44, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Analogy = induction + deduction
In logic, it is pretty obvious that analogy is simply two logical inferences: induction followed by deduction.
Suppose an analogy inference gives p(b) from p(a), this can be reduced to two inferences:
By induction: p(a) -> p(x) (constant a is generalised to a variable x) By deduction: p(x) -> p(b) (variable x is specialised to a constant b)
where p is a predicate symbol, a and b are constants and x is a variable. Clearly there also has to be some additional knowledge that specifies the domain. Presumably the same approach can be extended to more complex logical formulae. Pgr94 14:52, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
- Charles Sanders Peirce wrote something to this effect. Pgr94 15:46, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
I guess the article already makes clear that sometimes we can go from p(a) to p(b) without accepting (or being able to accept) p(x). See the cited article by Juthe. Besides, what you mean is that analogy gives the same results as induction + deduction give, not that analogy is induction + deduction. Velho 01:52, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
- The article currently has subsections on reducing analogy to induction ("special case of induction") and reducing analogy to deduction ("Hidden deduction"). Both inferences are inadequate on their own, as you need both. Not sure about the Juthe paper as it completely fails to mention Peirce who considered the problem nearly a century earlier! [1] Pgr94 07:30, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
