Steve Gimbel

This paper describes an argumentative fallacy we call ‘Retroductive Analogy.’ It occurs when the ability of a favored hypothesis to explain some phenomena, together with the fact that hypotheses of a similar sort are well supported, is taken to be sufficient evidence to accept the hypothesis. This fallacy derives from the retroductive or abductive form of reasoning described by Charles Sanders Peirce. According to Peirce’s account, retroduction can provide good reasons to pursue a hypothesis but does not, by itself, provide good reasons to believe the hypothesis. In successful applications of retroduction, pursuit leads to the accumulation of evidence. In retroductive analogy, comparison with other successful hypotheses is substituted for the genuine pursuit of evidence. We describe a case from ecological genetics in which retroduction plays a legitimate role as the initial phase of an ongoing research program that serves to accumulate genuine evidence for a hypothesis. We also examine two contexts in which the fallacy of retroductive analogy occurs: in defenses of Intelligent Design Theory and in defense of some hypotheses in Evolutionary Psychology

Stakeholder theory is a significant development in the drive to provide a foundation for intuitions concerning the moral responsibility connected to corporate decision making. The move to include the interests of workers, consumers, the communities and biological environment in which the corporations instantiations are located run counter to the view in which shareholders’ interests are paramount. The non-sale of the Hershey Foods company to Wrigley1 was the ultimate result of a massive call by stakeholders to put other interests before shareholder financial stakes, yet the discussion was notably not held in terms of stakeholder theory. Rather, the discussion was explicitly Aristotelian with opponents of the view arguing that the sale was improper because it ran counter to the essence or telos of the organisation. This case is no doubt unusual in that the founding documents of the organisation were appealed to in order to justify the claim that the essence of the corporation was to do more than enrich the shareholders. This paper intends to examine whether, in spite of this anomaly, the Hershey case has anything general to say about the foundations of corporate responsibility.