Evaluating an Analogy

One of the things that I learned about from this chapter was how best to judge analogies. I loved the seven steps that we are given to evaluate each example. As I walk through most analogies I can find some reason to pick it apart, but I would guess that is mainly due to my argumentative and critical personality. I constantly look at what people say and do to determine if they match up. Of the seven questions my favorite would have to be, “Can we state the similarities as premises and find a general principle that covers the two sides?” (p. 5) This is great because it looks critically at the ability for the analogy to hold truth. There are always at least two sides to every argument, and the analogy should be able to cover both. This is a great rubric as we often hear people try to reason with analogies.