The Purpose of an Analogy

This one is just an exercise for me. I use analogies so often, and with fair frequency people come back and say, "but A isn't B!" making me think they've completely missed the point. It occurred to me that describing the point of an analogy in such a way as to explain why A doesn't have to equal B necessarily is actually quite difficult, so I wanted to try it out.

At its heart, an analogy is the comparison of two unlike things. But that alone doesn't really help us out much. Why compare two unlike things when there are plenty of similar things to compare?

Well, a comparison of two unlike things gives you a new perspective in a conversation; a fresh way to view the other person's point that might not be couched in all the same volatile rhetoric or implications that the originating argument might have. They don't have to be the same thing for a particular facet of them to be comparable, and I think there might even be a decent way to explain this with the abstract example we started with (or at least a very similar example):

"B is not C. The two are not equal- this is understood. However, the two share a number of characteristics that we can point to, at least one of which is the latter phoneme in its pronunciation: 'ee.'" Despite being fundamentally different from each other, the two can be compared in such a way that they have a meaningful connection. (Alright, so them ending in the same sound might not be super meaningful, but it's an abstract example. It's probably meaningful to poets or linguists)

A less abstract comparison that I used earlier today is the comparison of unions to welfare (or other social safety nets). These are fundamentally different institutions that have different goals, different structures, different politics, and get their power through different means. However, the two rely on a similar root principle: making conditions better for people who, individually/alone, do not have the power to demand or obtain those better conditions.

An analogy intends to compare an aspect of two things for which the context may be similar, or the intent may be similar, or the consequences may be similar. It is an attempt to find philosophical consistency in the how/why of the world. It's incredibly important to be clear about which similarity you're looking to examine, or else invite your rhetorical opponent to scrutinize the comparison as a 1:1 comparison (hence the counter, "A isn't B!")

The big problem, as I see it, with analogies is that they're a social scientist's source of stress. Analogies attempt to take two things that correlate and suggest that there's a reason they correlate using logic rather than pure statistics. Realistically, the only good reason we use analogies rather than hard statistics is that it's much easier for a brain to draw those connections than it is for a person/group to collect enough meaningful statistics to prove (or show great evidence towards) causation/meaningful correlation.

I personally love analogies. I think they capture and utilize one of the more interesting aspects of human intelligence/reasoning, but it's undeniable that they provide shaky evidence and are argumentatively non-robust. They rely on the human ability to make meaningful connections based on contextual similarities and then assigning relative merit to those specific similarities as compared to the differences of two things. (ie, the important thing about comparing unions to welfare is that they're a net good for society and that the methodology by which they obtain that net good is similar, even though they're otherwise super different.)

Maybe I'm totally off base? I dunno', it was a fascinating experiment to try to break down why I use analogies at least.

This was an extremely abstract post, so I apologize for what I now look back and realize is a rather complicated jumble of words and ideas.