Analogical Arguments in Ethics and Law: A Defence of a Deductivist Analysis

Abstract. The paper provides a quali-fied defence of Bruce Waller’s deduc-tivist schema for a priori analogical arguments in ethics and law. One cru-cial qualification is that the schema represents analogical arguments as complexes composed of one deductive inference (hence “deductivism”) but also of one non-deductive sub-argument. Another important qualifi-cation is that the schema is informed by normative assumptions regarding the conditions that an analogical ar-gument must satisfy in order for it to count as an optimal instance of its kind. Waller’s schema (in qualified form) is defended from criticisms