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13 Int'l J. Semiotics L. 1 (2000)

handle is hein.journals/intjsemi13 and id is 1 raw text is: JONATHAN YOVEL* ANALOGICAL REASONING AS TRANSLATION: THE PRAGMATICS OF TRANSIVITY ** ABSTRACT. This paper attempts to examine the underlying structure of analogical reasoning in decision making. The immediate (but not exclusive) context is the form of reasoning commonly seen as prevalent in common-law judicial decision making. Follow- ing Wittgenstein and Strawson the paper identifies the problem of the contingency of transitivity of analogical relations as a serious impediment to analogical reasoning. It then proceeds to offer a method of translation that delineates the borders of contingency and analyticity of transitivity in such cases, as well as proposes how these borders may be manipulated. The theoretical insight is to treat analogical relations anaphorically, as propredicates. Accordingly, the translation involves constructive functional transfor- mation from the form of meaning as continuum to the form of meaning as n-chotomies. Greimasian semiotics are then critically applied to examine in what sense translation - in this specific sense - can count as the deep structure of analogical/transitive reasoning, and what such a claim entails in terms of linguistic ideology. Although the model of translation is formal it is not acontextual, and must be supplemented by importation of constitutive practical considerations (i.e. norms) from concrete decision-making contexts. As such this is a case study of the pragmatic functions of formalization - a conception that may seem alien to some. When determining which states-of-affairs are deemed compatible, the formal model is shown to serve as a framework to what eventually becomes a pragmatic device. * Assistant Professor of Law and Jurisprudence, Faculty of Law, Haifa University. LL.B., B.A magna cum laude (philosophy) 1992 (Tel-Aviv University); LL.M. with honors 1995 (Northwestern University); S.J.D. 1997 (Northwestern University). Comments are most welcome at the above address or by email, jyovel@research.haifa. ac.il. ** For extremely helpful comments I thank professor Dragan Milovanovic as well as two anonymous reviewers for the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law. I am most grateful to professors Ephraim Nissan and Antonio A. Martino who provided very welcome advice and support in earlier stages. Professor Elizabeth Mertz encouraged me to further explore the pragmatic contextualization of formal models and her input was, as usual, invaluable. This study quotes from an earlier working-paper of a more limited scope, included in Antonio A. Martino (ed.), Logica delle Norme (Pisa: SEU, 1997), 153-172. rp International Journal for the Semiotics of Law 13: 1-27, 2000. © 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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