 There appear to be at least three routes to avoiding these difficulties and finding a role for analogical arguments within Bayesian epistemology. First, there is what we might call minimal Bayesianism. Within the Bayesian framework, some writers (Jeffreys 1973; Salmon 1967, 1990; Shimony 1970) have argued that a ‘seriously proposed’ hypothesis must have a sufficiently high prior probability to allow it to become preferred as the result of observation. Salmon has suggested that analogical reasoning is one of the most important means of showing that a hypothesis is ‘serious’ in this sense. If analogical reasoning is directed primarily towards prior probability assignments, it can provide inductive support while remaining formally distinct from confirmation, avoiding the logical difficulties noted above. This approach is minimally Bayesian because it provides nothing more than an entry point into the Bayesian apparatus, and it only applies to novel hypotheses. An orthodox Bayesian, such as de Finetti (de Finetti and Savage 1972, de Finetti 1974), might have no problem in allowing that analogies play this role.