2 1 0C H A P T E R 9 ■ I n f e r e n c e t o t h e B e s t E x p l a n a t i o n a n d f r o m A n a l o g y- It is immoral for a doctor to lie to a patient about a test result, even if
the doctor thinks that lying is in the patient’s best interest. We know
this because even doctors would agree that it would be morally wrong
for a financial adviser to lie to them about a potential investment,
even if the financial advisor thinks that this lie is in the doctor ’s best
interests. - Chrysler was held legally liable for damages due to defects in the
suspension of its Corvair. The defects in the Pinto gas tank caused injuries
that were just as serious. Thus, Ford should also be held legally liable for
damages due to those defects. - The following excerpt presents evidence that Neanderthals were cannibals.
Put the central argument from analogy, which is italicized here, into stand-
ard form. Then reconstruct the argument as an inference to the best expla-
nation. Which representation best captures the force of the argument, or are
they equally good?
“A GNAWING QUESTION IS ANSWERED”^7
Tim White is worried that he may have helped to pin a bad rap on the
Neanderthals, the prehistoric Europeans who died out 25,000 years ago. “There
is a danger that everyone will think that all Neanderthals were cannibals and
that’s not necessarily true,” he says. White was part of a French-American
team of paleoanthropologists who recently found conclusive evidence that at
least some Neanderthals ate others about 100,000 years ago. But that doesn’t
mean they were cannibalistic by nature, he stresses. Most people don’t realize
that cannibalism is widespread throughout nature, says White, a professor at
the University of California at Berkeley and the author of a book on prehistoric
cannibalism.
The question of whether the Neanderthals were cannibals had long been
a hotly debated topic among anthropologists. No proof had ever been found.
That debate ended, however, with the recent analysis by the team of stone
tools and bones found in a cave at Moula-Guercy in southern France. The cave
is about the size of a living room, perched about 80 metres above the Rhone
River. “This one site has all of the evidence right together,” says White. “It’s as
if somebody put a yellow tape around the cave for 100,000 years and kept the
scene intact.” The bones of deer and other fauna show the clear markings of
the nearby stone tools, indicating the deer had been expertly butchered; they
were skinned, their body parts cut off and the meat and tendons sliced fromDiscussion QuestionsSource: A Gnawing Question is Answered by Michael Downey as appeared in THE TORONTO
STAR, October 10, 1999.97364_ch09_ptg01_195-214.indd 210 11/15/13 5:33 PM
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