Analyze the structure of the analogical arguments in the following passages, and evaluate them in terms of

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Analyze the structure of the analogical arguments in the following passages, and evaluate them in terms of the six criteria that have been explained:


Look round the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it: you will fi nd it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions, to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the production of human contrivance, of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since therefore the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of men; though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work, which he has executed. By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do we prove at once the existence of a Deity, and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.
—David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion , 1779

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Introduction To Logic

ISBN: 9781138500860

15th Edition

Authors: Irving M. Copi, Carl Cohen, Victor Rodych

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