You Cannot Refute an Analogy using Details

An analogy exists as an abstraction.

Different details can subsume to the same abstraction. (e.g. both chalk and metal can reach 30°C, both terrier and poodle are dogs, etc.)

This multiple realizability of details means they cannot be used to negate an abstraction, as there is no way to know whether their inclusion or removal in the “set” contributes to the abstraction’s identity.

Any attempt at making such a casual connection is pure fallacy, as, by definition, that which exists in the abstract has wholly distinct properties from the pieces of which it is made.

An abstraction bears universal properties, meaning there are deep indescribable connections between disparate areas that are somehow analogous.

The human brain, being the most complex entity, has evolved to pick up on those analogies. They cannot be defended with some detailed account, as per the argument above. Things persist in the mind for evolutionary reasons. Period.

The obvious consternation of the reductionist comes about as “but what about false analogies!”

Yes, false analogies indeed. Let us now visit the logical structure of such a fallacy:

⦾ Entity A has attributes a, b, c, and z.
⦾ Entity B has attributes a, b, c.
-> Therefore, entity B probably has attribute z also.

Here, there is a lack of mapping between structures (mental, mathematical, societal…doesn’t matter). That lack of mapping is the missing property. PROPERTY, not detail.

The reductionist will attempt to use a missing detail of Entity B as their argument for fallacy. But this is irrational and unscientific, since details are *known* to map to abstractions in a multiply realizable fashion, and there is no way to demonstrate a detail does not belong to an abstract set (no, applied math cannot do this).

“But surely an experiment can remove a piece and see what happens!”

See what happens? What is happening? A change in a contrived experimental setup is not the same as a change in the abstract definition of a thing.

The logical structure of the fallacy is not wrong itself, it is how it is applied in the reductionist sense that is wrong. Details cannot refute an analogy. One must instead spot differences in the high-level properties of the systems in question.

A false analogy between a politician and Hitler is obvious, not because of some tallying of details (these can always be found), but because the context of the situations are different. One cannot be embedded in a world with different politics, learned lessons, constitutional safeguards, education and historical awareness, international organizations and agreements, tribunals and legal precedents, military and security alliances and economic and social reforms, and all the while merely exist as a Hitler.

Chasing the details is in fact dangerous, because one can flip and flop between any side they wish using details. Details are not robust. They are not defining. They cannot act as constraints on the system.

Details cannot refute an analogy.