Reference no: EM133251309

Assignment:

Evaluate the following analogical arguments (indicate whether they are weak, moderate, or strong). Explain your answer.

1. Whenever any talk arises among the unlearned concerning philosophical theories it is best to remain silent, because there is great danger in immediately throwing out what you have not yet digested. For sheep don't throw up the grass to show the shepherd how much they have eaten, but inwardly digesting their food, they outwardly produce wool and milk. Therefore, don't show your ideas to the unlearned, but show them your actions produced by those ideas after they have been digested. (adapted from Epictetus, 135 § 46)

2. To me the question whether liberty is a good or bad thing is as irrational as the question whether fire is a good or bad thing. Fire is both good and bad according to time, place, and circumstances. To answer the question would require knowledge of the complete history of humanity's uses of liberty. (adapted from J. F Stephen, 1967)

3. Consider the whole and every part of the natural world. You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines. All these various machines, and their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with astonishing accuracy. All this adapting of means to ends far exceeds the products of human workmanship. Since, the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer that the causes also resemble, and that the Author of nature is somewhat similar to the mind of women and men, though possessing much larger faculties commensurate with the work executed. (adapted from D. Hume, 1993)

4. The private world of instinctive interests is a small one, set in the midst of a great and powerful world which must, sooner or later, lay that private world in ruins. Unless we can so enlarge our interests as to include the whole outer world, we remain like a garrison in a besieged fortress, knowing that the enemy prevents escape and that ultimately surrender is inevitable. In such a life there is no peace, but a constant strife between the insistence of desire and the powerlessness of will. In one way or another, if our life is to be great and free, we must escape this prison and this strife. (Russell, 1997)

5. Quarry the granite rock with razors, or moor the vessel with a thread of silk; then may you hope with such keen and delicate instruments as human knowledge and human reason to contend against those giants, the passion and pride of man." (J. H. Newman, 1856).