Script video 10

Script video 10
Another very common kind of inductive argument is an argument from analogy.

We'll see that these arguments from analogy are
very closely related to inferences to the best explanation.
But first, we gotta ask, what's an analogy?
Reproduce el video desde ::19 y sigue la transcripción0:19
Analogy is basically a comparison.
between two things.
It points out similarities between those two things.
And analogies
are given all the time.
For example, a poet might say her eyes were like emeralds.
Well, in what way were they like emeralds? They might have had the same color.
They might have shimmered like emeralds.
They might have been valuable like emeralds.
And the analogy, her eyes were like
emeralds, doesn't really tell you exactly which respect
her eyes resembled emeralds. That's part of the point.
When you're writing poetry, you want to stimulate creative comparisons and
analogies of, so that readers of the poem can think about it in their own way.
Reproduce el video desde :1:12 y sigue la transcripción1:12
And the same thing holds for other analogies in other areas.
But the cause is not very specific, some people think
that analogies are just no good at all in arguments.
Actually though, we use analogies in arguments all the time.
Here's an example from public policy, they built
a transportation system in the city of Houston,
Texas it worked pretty well.
And then the planners in the city of Phoenix, Arizona
were wondering what kind of public transportation system to build there.
And they reasoned like this.
They said, Phoenix is a lot like Houston in many ways.
Large population, hot during the summer, many many people.
And large area.
So they said, Phoenix resembles Houston in a lot of ways.
This type of transportation system worked in Houston,
so it'll probably work well in Phoenix, also.
Now, what about law?
Lots of legal decisions were based on analogies
too, because common law systems at least follow precedent.
When judges decide
a case one way in one time, at one point,
then later on other judges are supposed to make similar decisions.
So you can say for example The Supreme Court declared
that segregated public high schools are unconstitutional in the United States.
Colleges are a lot like high schools, so segregated public colleges are
also unconstitutional in the United States.
And then med schools are a lot like colleges.
So segregated public medical schools are
also unconstitutional in the United States.
And that's the way the legal system evolves by drawing
analogies among the different cases that come up within that jurisdiction.
This form of argument in law might seem to be a real problem because
you don't say exactly what the similarities are.
But actually, it's very useful.
Because it is predictable if you know that
segregated high schools have been declared unconstitutional, you
pretty much know that judges are going to find
colleges unconstitutional too, if they are segregated .
And it also gives flexibility, so that judges can see when they're going too far.
They say well that
precedence's different and they distinguish the precedence.
So by resting legal reasoning on arguments from analogy, they
gain both predictability and also flexibility in the legal system.
So arguments from analogy can be pretty useful.
Reproduce el video desde :4: y sigue la transcripción4:00
Fine but policies and laws Are all about norms and values.
What about science and hard facts?
The science issues analogies too.
For example, scientists at one point didn't know
what was at the center of the earth.
But they found a bunch of meteors and meteorites, that had a high iron content.
Much higher than the content of iron in the crust
of the earth so they reasoned the earth must be
like these other meteors and meteorites so they must have
a similar amount of iron in it because they were
produced in the same way in the history of the universe
but that means there must be a similar amount of iron.
In the earth, if it's not in the crust, where could it be?
It must be down in the core.
So they figured, probably the core of the earth has a lot of iron in it.
That's just one example.
But scientists actually use analogies a lot, and
if you don't believe me, go read some psychological
studies of scientific reasoning.
We're going to focus on an example from art history.
Just imagine that you're going through the attic and you find an old painting.
It looks a lot like a painting by the famous impressionist Cezanne.
And if it is by Cezanne, it's worth an awful lot.
But you've got to figure out Whether this painting is by Cezzane?
How do you
figure it out, because Cezzane didn't sign it?
He didn't sign a lot of his paintings.
Well, what you do is you look at other
Cezzane paintings and try to find out whether they're similar.
And if you're not an expert, you probably better
check with an expert and have them do it.
But they're going to do the same thing.
They're going to compare this painting to a lot
of other paintings that we know are by Cezanne.
And then you can reason like this.
This painting has a certain kind of brush work and coloring, and so on and so on.
Subject matter, whatever.
other paintings by Cezanne have very similar
brush work and color patterns and topic.
And so on.
Those other paintings are definitely by Cezanne, we know
that, therefore, this painting is probably by Cezanne as well.
Now that's an argument from analogy.
This argument from analogy shares a certain form with
the other arguments from analogy that we discussed before,
and we can pick out that form By substituting
letters for the English words in the English argument.
For example, we can substitute the letter A for
the subject, that is the topic of the argument.
The painting that we don't know whether it's a Cezanne or not.
And we can substitute the letters B, C, and D, for.
The similar objects that are also Cezanne paintings.
And we can substitute the letters P, Q, and R for the similarities between the
paintings that we know are by Cezanne and the one that we're not sure of.
And then we can substitute the letter X. For that
particular property of being by Cezanne.
And when you substitute all those letters for the English words, then
the argument simply says that object A has properties P, Q, and R.
And objects B, C, and D also have those properties P, Q, and R.
And B,C, and D also have the property X, so the subject,
object A, probably also has the property X, namely this painting is by Cezanne.
Probably.
Of course since this argument only tries to show
that the conclusion is probably true, it's an inductive argument.
It's not valid, it's possible for the
premises to be true and the conclusion false.
Namely this painting might resemble all those other paintings in those
respects and yet it's not by Cezanne. Secondly the argument is defeasible.
You could get some additional information that
makes it Really look like a bad argument.
For example, you could turn the painting over.
And on the back, you find the signature of a different artist, like
[INAUDIBLE]
And then you realize, this isn't by Cezanne at all.
But nonetheless, the argument can be strong.
It can always be stronger, because there can be more similarities.
And more important similarities, but it can be a strong argument and a good
argument because it's inductive, so it doesnt even try or pretend to be valid.
How can we tell when an argument from analogy really
does give us a strong reason to believe the conclusion.
What are the standards by which we measure How
strong the argument is and how strong the reasons are.
Well, one of them should be obvious.
Of course the premises have to be true and justified, like in any argument.
A standard that's relevant here is that when there are more
important analogies, then it provides a stronger
reason because some analogies are just totally unimportant,
the painting is square, other paintings by
Cezzane are square therefore this is by Cezzane.
Well that's ridiculous right because lots of painters use square canvases.
For something that's important that it's going to
be specific to Cezzane and very, very idiosyncratic.
Is going to be more important for this type of argument.
Secondly, when they're more analogies.
because we don't know exactly which one is
the one that's important, that's the point of an
argument from an analogy, you draw the analogy
without knowing exactly which respect is the crucial one.
So the more analogies that you have The more likely
you are going to hit on the ones that are crucial.
So if it's not just brush work it's also the
type of paint that is used. It's also the color scheme that was used.
It's also the geometric shapes. It's also the subject matter.
It's a particular mountain that's close by where Cezzane lived.
And he painted a lot of that mountain.
And on and on and on. The more analogies, the more
likely that some of them are going to be
the crucial ones and therefore the stronger the argument
is and the stronger reason it gives you
to believe that this particular painting is by Cezzane.
But of course there are always going to
be some dis-analogies as well because Cezanne didn't
paint the same thing over and over again exactly the way he did the first time.
The fewer dis-analogies the stronger the argument.
There'll always be some or there wouldn't be much of
an argument there it would be exactly the same painting.
But the fewer dis-analogies, and the less important those
dis-analogies are, then the stronger the argument's going to be.
Next, the objects that you're comparing,
because they're similar in various respects.
That is, the other paintings that we know are by Cezzane.
If they're quite diverse then that means that you have similarities
among a diverse group, they all share these particular properties and
that means that Cezzane continued to use those features throughout
all the different types of paintings that he did.
And that means that it's going to be a stronger
reason to believe that this painting is by Cezzane.
Finally, the conclusion is weaker.
You could say, therefore, this painting is definitely
by Cezzane and it couldn't be anybody else.
Well that's kind of crazy, right.
But if you say it's
probably by Cezzane, it has some chance it's
by Cezzane, maybe you want to check it further.
Then you're weakening the conclusion and that can make the argument stronger.
So in all of these different ways we can assess
how strong the argument from analogy is By looking at the
respects in which the objects are analogous, the diversity among
the objects that are analogous, the strength of the conclusion, and
so on, and so on.
And that is how we access an argument from analogy for strength.
I want to close With one more example that raises interesting questions about
the relationship between arguments from analogy
and inferences to the best explanation.
It concerns the pressing issue of whether neanderthals were cannibals.
Now it's not a pressing issue for most people but it is
a very pressing issue for people who study neanderthals.
And so it's quite a breakthrough when they found some
bones in a cave that they knew was inhabited by neanderthals.
In that cave, next to what looked like a firepit.
There were bones of deer, with marking of a certain sort.
That looked like they had been cutting the meat off the bone.
And they also found bones of humans in that
cave where they had been cutting, where they had similar markings.
And they argued since the bones have similar markings, and
these bones, the bones of the deer, were probably cut up
for food, well, the human bones were probably also cut up for food.
So they reached the conclusion that at least some times Neanderthals
ate humans.
What's interesting is that there are two ways to reconstruct this argument.
First, you can reconstruct it as an argument from analogy.
The bones of the humans were found in this location with these kinds of markings.
And the bones of deer were also found
in this location with these kinds of markings.
That the deer were cutup for food,
therefore the humans were probably also cutup for food.
Now that sounds like an argument from analogy when you think about it that way.
But you can also reconstruct the argument as an inference to the best explanation.
The bones of the humans Had these markings on them and we're in this location.
How do you explain that?
The best explanation of why they have these particular kinds
of markings is that they were cut up for food.
Therefore.
The humans
were probably cut up for food as well. Then notice
that both reconstructions of the argument make the argument look okay.
And so it's not clear which tells you the real
structure of the argument that the author was trying to give.
And that means that arguments from analogy and inferences to the best explanation
are actually very closely related.
And sometimes you can take an argument and reconstruct it either way.
It's not going to affect, very much, how strong the argument
is, but it might affect how you see the argument working.
And the big difference is that when you do an argument from analogy,
you don't have to specify exactly which respect is important.
So you can point out lots of analogies, and
hope that you hit the one that really matters.
Whereas when your doing an inference to
the best explanation, Then you have to pick
out the specific property that gives you
the explanation of the phenomenon that you observe.
So it forces you to get a little
bit more specific than with an argument from analogy.
But otherwise, these two arguments are clearly very closely related.
And they're basically two different ways to argue.
For similar conclusions.
For example, in this case, with the argument from analogy, you don't know
whether it's the location next to the fire, or the types of markings.
Or maybe there's several different types of markings, and they're all the same.
But you don't know which ones are the ones
that indicate how it was killed, and which markings indicate.
How it was cut up to be eaten and an argument from analogy
can leave all that vague and just think that probably one of those similarities
like justify the conclusion that the humans were cut up to be eaten.
But if you're going to give an inference to
the best explanation Then, you're saying that these markings.
For example, diagonal markings on leg bones, might suggest
that they cut that up in a certain way,
because that's how they prepared the deer meat, and
they were used to preparing deer meat that way.
So they used similar cutting
techniques when they were preparing human meat.
and you've got an explanatory story that's
much more specific than a mere analogy, but
it also commits you to a lot, so it might be questionable in various ways.
So when you look at an argument like this, you've got to decide which way to
reconstruct the argument, as an argument from analogy
or as an inference to the best explanation.
And the general rule is one that we saw Long
ago in early weeks of this course.
If you really want to understand an argument, you
want to understand your opponents or you want to have
a better argument for yourself, then you try
to make the argument look as good as possible.
So when you face a particular example like the neanderthal
example, you have to decide is this argument be, going to
be better if I reconstruct it as an argument from
analogy Or is it going to be better if I reconstruct
it as an inference to the best explanation and the best
reconstruction is going to be the one that makes the argument look best.
Explica este tema de forma sencilla

Coach
¡Claro! Voy a explicar este tema de forma sencilla para que sea fácil de entender.
El tema se llama "Cómo razonar de forma inductiva". La razón inductiva es un tipo de
razonamiento en el que se llega a una conclusión general a partir de ejemplos o
evidencias específicas. Es como cuando sacas una conclusión basada en lo que has
observado o experimentado.
Aquí hay algunos puntos clave para entender cómo funciona el razonamiento inductivo:
1. Argumentos inductivos: Un argumento inductivo es aquel en el que se presenta
evidencia o ejemplos para respaldar una conclusión general. Por ejemplo, si ves
que todos los perros que has conocido tienen pelo, puedes concluir que todos los
perros tienen pelo.
2. Razonamiento causal: El razonamiento causal es cuando se establece una
relación de causa y efecto entre dos eventos. Por ejemplo, si observas que
siempre que llueve, las calles se mojan, puedes concluir que la lluvia causa que
las calles se mojen.
3. Probabilidad y elección: El razonamiento inductivo también se utiliza para tomar
decisiones basadas en la probabilidad. Por ejemplo, si sabes que hay un 70% de
probabilidad de que llueva mañana, puedes decidir llevar un paraguas.
4. Analogías: Las analogías son comparaciones entre dos cosas que son similares
en ciertos aspectos. El razonamiento inductivo también se puede utilizar para
hacer analogías y llegar a conclusiones. Por ejemplo, si ves que dos personas
tienen los mismos síntomas y han comido la misma comida, puedes concluir que
la comida fue la causa de los síntomas en ambos casos.
En resumen, el razonamiento inductivo es una forma de llegar a conclusiones generales
basadas en ejemplos o evidencias específicas. Se utiliza para hacer argumentos,
establecer relaciones causales, tomar decisiones basadas en la probabilidad y hacer
analogías. Es una herramienta importante para pensar de manera lógica y tomar
decisiones informadas.
¿Cuáles son los componentes clave del razonamiento inductivo?¿Cómo se puede aplicar
el razonamiento inductivo en situaciones de la vida real?¿Cuál es la diferencia entre el
razonamiento inductivo y el razonamiento deductivo?

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Script video 10

Another very common kind of inductive argument is an argument from analogy.

Explica este tema de forma sencilla

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