Here is Argument 6:6.Bill, an attorney, has four brothers, including Sam. One of the other three sells real estate. Another is anunemployed artist. The third owns a restaurant. These three and Bill are all Democrats.Therefore Sam is a Democrat, too.Actually Argument 6 is as strong as Argument 5, but for a different reason. We still have four premise-analogues (Bill and the three brothers that don’t include Sam). Now it is true that, except for Bill, Sam’sbrothers aren’t attorneys. But in Argument 6 we don’t know what profession Sam is. The fact that Billand the other brothers are all Democrats despite exhibiting a diverse array of professions, makes it morelikely that, when it comes to this family, it doesn’t make any difference what Sam does professionally—he is still apt to be a Democrat.Guidelines for Thinking Critically About an Argument from AnalogyWith these examples in mind, you can see that an argument from analogy can be evaluated using thefollowing guidelines:■The more similarities between the premise-analogue and the conclusion-analogue the stronger theargument, and the fewer the similarities (or the more the dissimilarities) the weaker the argument.■Increasing the number of premise-analogues helps strengthen the argument, provided theadditional analogues are genuinely similar to the conclusion-analogue.Page 341■Analogues that lack the attribute of interest arecontrary analogues,and the fewer of them amongthe premise-analogues the stronger the argument.