A level revision

Analogies

An analogy uses a similar situation to encourage the reader to accept the conclusion of an argument. Analogies are like comparisons but rather than suggesting a single or few similarities between situations an analogy suggests the situations are significantly parallel. An analogy basically says that because the two situations are significantly similar if you accept one you must accept the other. For example:

Smoking with your children is dangerous, you may as well drive around with them at 100mph in the rain without a seatbelt.

Here the dangers to a child presented by smoking are being compared with the dangers to a child by speeding in the rain without a seatbelt. We would see the latter situation as very dangerous so we should also accept smoking with your children is dangerous.

Evaluating an analogy

You need to be evaluate the use of an analogy in an argument, this involves three steps:

1. Identify the situations being compared
2. Identify the similarities and differences in the situations
3. Evaluate whether the differences outweigh the similarities

Using the above example of smoking, the first step is to identify the two situations being compared. As was mentioned earlier here the dangers to a child presented by smoking are being compared with the dangers to a child by speeding in the rain without a seatbelt.

The similarities between the two situations include:

• Both situations present danger and risk to the child
• In both situations the child has no say in the actions of the adult

However there are also some differences

• The danger to a child from second hand smoke is far less than that presented by driving dangerously.
• A child would need to be exposed to smoke for a long period of time whereas a crash could occur within minutes when driving dangerously.

Lastly you need to weigh up the similarities and differences and decide whether the analogy is a strong one or a weak one. In this case there is significant difference in that driving dangerously presents a much larger risk than smoking which makes this a weak analogy as the situations being compared are too extreme.

You will also need to decide whether an analogy is relevant. Expanding on the above example:

Smoking with your children is dangerous, you may as well drive around with them at 100mph in the rain without a seatbelt. We should therefore ban the sell of cigarettes

If, for arguments sake, we take the analogy to be a strong one, it is not very relevant to the conclusion that cigarettes should stop being sold. A better conclusion would be something like "we should encourage smokers to give up" or "we should encourage smoking away from children"