ABSTRACT
Analogies can be quite charming and, indeed, seductively so. Not only can they serve as powerful cognitive tools in exploring and explaining the nature of hitherto unfamiliar things in light of more familiar ones, as well as arguing for the working hypotheses we thus formulate about them. Moreover, they can serve as powerful rhetorical tools in making certain features of the thing in question more salient and, therefore, persuading others of the hypotheses and the arguments we formulate about them. However, to the extent that the cognitive and rhetorical effects of analogies can come apart, they can seduce us into accepting working hypotheses or arguments about things that are not founded by the relevant features they are taken to have in common. This seductiveness is what makes analogies, despite their undeniable charm, somewhat tricky. 1
