Analogical reasoning is a valuable logical resource in a public health context. It is used extensively by public health scientists in risk assessments of new technologies, environmental hazards and infectious diseases. For its part, the public also avails of analogical reasoning when it assesses a range of public health problems. In this article, some of these uses of analogical reasoning in public health are examined. Analogical arguments have courted approval and disapproval in roughly equal measure by a long succession of logicians and philosophers. The logical features of these arguments which make them simultaneously compelling and contemptible are considered. As a form of presumptive reasoning, analogical arguments have a valuable role to play in closing epistemic gaps in knowledge. This heuristic function of these arguments is illustrated through an examination of some uses of analogical reasoning in recent public health crises. Finally, the results of a study of analogical reasoning in 879 members of the public are reported. This study reveals that lay members of the public are able to discern the logical and epistemic conditions under which analogical arguments are rationally warranted in a public health context.
Guarini, Marcello, Amy Butchart, Paul Simard Smith, and Andrei Moldovan
2009 “Resources for Research on Analogy: A Multi-Disciplinary Guide.” Informal Logic 29 (2): 84–197.
Hamblin, Charles L
1970Fallacies. London: Methuen.
Hofmann, Bjørn, Jan Helge Solbakk, and Søren Holm
2006 “Analogical Reasoning in Handling Emerging Technologies: The Case of Umbilical Cord Blood Biobanking.” The American Journal of Bioethics 6 (6): 49–57.
Hunt, Stephen, and Lynn J. Frewer
2001“Impact of BSE on Attitudes to GM Food.” Risk, Decision and Policy 6 (2): 91–103.
Klahr, David
2000Exploring Science: The Cognition and Development of Discovery Processes. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Makins, Marian
(ed.)1991Collins English Dictionary. Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers.
Mill, John Stuart
1974“A System of Logic Raciocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation.” In The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Volume VIII1, ed. by J.M. Robson. Toronto and London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Muraskin, William
1993“Hepatitis B as a Model (and Anti-Model) for AIDS.” In AIDS and Contemporary History, ed. by Virginia Berridge, and Philip Strong, 108–132. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Plant, Aileen J
2008“When Action Can’t Wait: Investigating Infectious Disease Outbreaks.” In Uncertainty and Risk: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, ed. by Gabriele Bammer, and Michael Smithson, 45–54. London: Earthscan.
Rescher, Nicholas
1977Dialectics: A Controversy-Oriented Approach to the Theory of Knowledge. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Rescher, Nicholas
2006Presumption and the Practices of Tentative Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Todd, Peter M., and Gerd Gigerenzer
2000“Simple Heuristics That Make Us Smart.”Behavioral and Brain Sciences 23 (5): 727–41.
Waller, Bruce N
2001“Classifying and Analysing Analogies.”Informal Logic 21 (3): 199–218.
1992“Nonfallacious Arguments from Ignorance.”American Philosophical Quarterly 29 (4): 381–87.
Walton, Douglas N
1996Argumentation Schemes for Presumptive Reasoning. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Walton, Douglas N
2010“Why Fallacies Appear to be Better Arguments Than They Are.”Informal Logic 30 (2): 159–84.
Whitelaw, Sandy
2012“The Emergence of a ‘Dose-Response’ Analogy in the Health Improvement Domain of Public Health: A Critical Review.”Critical Public Health 22 (4): 427–40.
Wood, Andrew W
2006“How Dangerous are Mobile Phones, Transmission Masts, and Electricity Pylons?”Archives of Diseases in Childhood 91 (4): 361–366.
Woods, John
1995“Appeal to Force.” In Fallacies: Classical and Contemporary Readings, ed. by Hans V. Hansen, and Robert C. Pinto, 240–250. Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press.
Woods, John
2004The Death of Argument: Fallacies in Agent-Based Reasoning. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Zylberman, Patrick
2010“Comment: Influenza Epidemics and the Politics of Historical Analogy.” In Influenza and Public Health, ed. by Tamara Giles-Vernick, and Susan Craddock, 84–90. Abingdon: Earthscan.
Cited by
Cited by 6 other publications
Cummings, Louise
2015. The Challenge for Public Health. In Reasoning and Public Health: New Ways of Coping with Uncertainty, ► pp. 1 ff.
Cummings, Louise
2015. Circular Argument. In Reasoning and Public Health: New Ways of Coping with Uncertainty, ► pp. 121 ff.
Cummings, Louise
2015. Philosophy and Public Health. In Reasoning and Public Health: New Ways of Coping with Uncertainty, ► pp. 19 ff.
Cummings, Louise
2015. Argument from Analogy. In Reasoning and Public Health: New Ways of Coping with Uncertainty, ► pp. 93 ff.
Cummings, Louise
2020. Critical Thinking in Medicine and Health. In Fallacies in Medicine and Health, ► pp. 1 ff.
Cummings, Louise
2020. Arguments from Analogy. In Fallacies in Medicine and Health, ► pp. 191 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 1 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.