If you need to use an analogy to convince someone of your point then they are not worth discussing an issue with.
Explaining and convincing can be regarded as two separate stages. if you are explaining to someone something that is novel to them , you pretty much have to use an analogy.
Good point, perhaps my view is skewed as I do almost all of my learning and explaining in technical fields (mostly chemistry and biology) and with people who are on a similar knowledge level to me. I can imagine that in a situation of trust but little knowledge (e.g. I am explaining my work to a family member) or in a different field to mine they would be more useful.
I think my assessment here may have been too focussed on a specific subset of analogy use, which I did not properly specify in the post.
Edit to clarify: I still believe intuition pumps in philosophy are a bad sort of analogy in that they are too easily manipulated to serve the philosophical interests of the speaker
Explaining and convincing can be regarded as two separate stages. if you are explaining to someone something that is novel to them , you pretty much have to use an analogy.
Good point, perhaps my view is skewed as I do almost all of my learning and explaining in technical fields (mostly chemistry and biology) and with people who are on a similar knowledge level to me. I can imagine that in a situation of trust but little knowledge (e.g. I am explaining my work to a family member) or in a different field to mine they would be more useful.
I think my assessment here may have been too focussed on a specific subset of analogy use, which I did not properly specify in the post.
Edit to clarify: I still believe intuition pumps in philosophy are a bad sort of analogy in that they are too easily manipulated to serve the philosophical interests of the speaker