Analogical Reasoning - Science topic

Dear Robert Shour

Yes, from the search results. It is a general category of reasoning.

As far as I know, reasoning by analogy involves drawing parallels or comparisons between things, and it can be used in a variety of contexts, including cognitive problem solving, legal reasoning, and general intelligence assessments.

I hope this helps.

Logical fallacies have an element of truth about them; it is just that they are not sound arguments in all circumstances. I agree with H.G. Callaway that reputation of expertise is important, whether that is a peer-reviewed journal with a high ranking, or a professor from a prestigious university writing an article. Reputation can be a guide to likelihood of truth, although it is no guarantee (because the whole community may be wrong, but the strongest arguments that support a conclusion turn out to be false). In my view, heterodoxy is important for the development of any discipline, but insights from experts with orthodox views rightly carry the greatest weight.

A more famous example of a logical fallacy of value is abductive reasoning: if A, B IMPLIES A, therefore B. This is clearly a fallacy; but the truth in it is that there is a causal or explanatory relationship (or constant conjunction) relationship between B and A, then the inference may be valid. In any case B IMPLIES A, A increases the likelihood of B.

Philadelphia, PA

Dear Manfredi & readers,

Well, I guess we have your answer. Arguments by analogy for the plausibility of a hypothesis are not reasonable.

It seems though that you simply equivocate on what it is that a "reasonable argument" is supposed to accomplish. We cannot define a reasonable hypothesis as one which will be finally proven. There is no way to know which hypotheses will turn out correct before hand. People try them out, develop them and look for ways to test them.

Also, there is no way to know which hypotheses will end up in unending arguments or disputes --before hand. That is why reasonable hypotheses are part of science even if they will in fact never proven--in which case, they are eventually given up and enter into the history of science.

A more basic difficulty in your argument is that you seem to be adverse to unconfirmed hypotheses however they are arrived at.

As it happens, though, the science and scholarly disciplines are full of yet to be tested and confirmed hypotheses, from string theory to gravity as a quantum field theory, to loop quantum gravity, etc and on to, say, theories of the location and identity of the original speakers of the reconstructed proto-Indo-european language. If you are not comfortable with this, then I see little sympathy with the growing edges of the sciences and scholarly disciplines.

My view is that there is better and worse among even untested hypotheses, and that we can sometimes tell the difference.

See:

H.G. Callaway

---you wrote---

And my answer continues to be, it may sound reasonable, at the outset, but may instead be proven fallacious. Meaning, no, that analogy is not reasonable (and perhaps, who knew?). In the criminal law example, people can argue both sides "until the cows come home," and continue to insist "it is reasonable" for the rest of time. In the quantitative sciences, eventually reality will rear its ugly head. .

Dear Dr Farid, Thank you for your responses. The problem is not evident that it seems. if we consider a volume V and a volume V/100 with the same surface of contact. the time to evaporate V/100 is less than t/100 where t is time to evaporate the Volume V. We can verify that by simple experiment. This is what i mean by the efficiency to evaporate water by thin layers. On the other hand the analogical reasoning exposed in my question is related to convection definitively.

I suggest you to read some related artices from IEEE transactions as well as other reputable journals (e. g. Information science, expert systems with applications, etc.). If you want, you also can read my review article about FPN and related industrial applications in Artificial Intelligence Review (Springer). Good luck 

Following on from Carlos answer above:

Analogical reasoning involving 2 analogs plays a role in transduction (Gick and Holyoak, 1980) but analogy between three analogs has been shown to support induction (Gick and Holyoak, 1983) – both inference methods are supposed to be involved in creativity.

MARY L. GICK AND KEITH J . HOLYOAK, COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 12,306-355 (1980), Analogical Problem Solving

MARY L. GICK AND KEITH, COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 15, l-38 (1983), Schema Induction and Analogical Transfer, J. HOLYOAK