Analogies in Kant’s Philosophy of Science

Analogies in Kant’s Philosophy of Science

Kant argues in his logic lectures that analogies are useful and indispensable for extending cognition by experience. But why should we expect that comparing an unfamiliar object with similar and more familiar things will teach us anything about the unknown? Is Kant right to think that in empirical enquiry we cannot get on without analogies? In this paper I suggest that we can find answers to these questions at the heart of Kant’s theory of cognition. Analogies are useful and indispensable, on Kant’s account, because empirical cognition is already grounded in an irreducible analogical conception of the world. By situating the proposed account within the recently revived debate on analogies in the philosophy of science, I show that Kant’s answers have important implications for the role of analogies in empirical enquiry, the relation of analogical and inductive inference, and the interdependence of regulative and constitutive principles in science.