“A man ought no more to value himself for being wiser than a woman if he owes…
2014
“A man ought no more to value himself for being wiser than a woman if he owes his advantage to a better education, than he ought to boast of his courage for beating a man when his hands were tied.” The above passage is an instance of
Answer: C. Analogical argument — Concept: forms of support in arguments An argument is classified by the kind of support its premises give its conclusion. That support can take different…
- A.
Deductive argument
- B.
Hypothetical argument
- C.
Analogical argument
- D.
Factual argument
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: C
Concept: forms of support in arguments
An argument is classified by the kind of support its premises give its conclusion. That support can take different forms:
Formal support: the premises entail the conclusion, so that granting them while denying it would be a contradiction.
Conditional support: a supposition is entertained and what follows from it is traced, without the supposition itself being established.
Evidential support: observations or recorded data settle what is actually the case.
Support by resemblance: two cases are asserted to be alike in relevant respects, so a judgement already granted for one case is extended to the other.
Support by resemblance yields a probable conclusion, and its strength varies with how relevant the shared features are to the point at issue.
Applying this to the passage
The passage sets two situations side by side:
A man who is wiser than a woman only because he was given a better education.
A man who boasts of his courage after beating an opponent whose hands were tied.
The likeness asserted between them is that in each case the advantage comes from an inequality in the conditions rather than from any merit of the person claiming it. The judgement already granted for the second situation — that such boasting is empty — is then carried over to the first. The entire weight of the passage rests on that parallel between two cases, so the support offered is support by resemblance, and the passage is an instance of an analogical argument.
Cross-check against the other classifications
Deductive argument: this would require the conclusion to follow with necessity from stated premises. Here the conclusion can be refused simply by denying that the two situations are alike in the relevant respect, so nothing is entailed.
Hypothetical argument: this would require the reasoning to turn on a conditional premise of the form "if P, then Q", with a supposition set up and its consequence traced. The word "if" in the passage only fixes a condition inside one of the two situations being compared; no supposition is entertained and carried through to a consequence.
Factual argument: this would rest on observation, data, or reported occurrences about what is actually the case. The passage offers no evidence of that kind — it offers a comparison.
The passage reasons from the resemblance between two cases, so it is an analogical argument.