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What's Wrong with Slippery Slope Arguments?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Trudy Govier
Trudy Govier*
Affiliation:
Trent University
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Extract

Slippery slope arguments are commonly thought to be fallacious. But is there a single fallacy which they all commit? A study of applied logic texts reveals competing diagnoses of the supposed error, and several recent authors take slippery slope arguments seriously. Clearly, there is room for comment. I shall give evidence of divergence on the question of what sort of argument constitutes a slippery slope, distinguish four different types of argument which have all been deemed to be slippery slopes, and contend that two of these types need involve no logical error.

We find in textbook accounts three quite differently oriented treatments of slippery slope: conceptual — relating to vagueness and the ancient sorites paradox; precedential — relating to the need to treat similar cases consistently; and causal — relating to the avoidance of actions which will, or would be likely to, set off a series of undersirable events.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , June 1982 , pp. 303 - 316
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1982

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References

1 Cf. Yale Kamisar, ‘Against Euthanasia,’ in R. Abelson and M.L. Friquegnon, eds. Ethics for Modern Life; Sissela Bok, Lying; and Gregory Trianosky, ‘Rule Utilitarianism and the Slippery Slope,’ Journal of Philosophy, 1978

2 Scriven, Reasoning, 117;Google Scholar S.N. Thomas, Practical Reasoning in Natural language, 204-51; Robert J. Fogelin, Understanding Arguments, 77-81; and T. Edward Dames, Attacking Faulty Reasoning, 37-9

3 Scriven, 117

4 Beardsley, Thinking Straight 4th. edn., 146-50; Gilbert, M.A., How to Win an Argument, 98-104

5 Beardsley, 151-2. In Beardsley's end-of-chapter exercises, examples # 3 and #5 both mix empirical considerations with conceptual ones.

6 Logical Self-Defense, 163-9

7 Ibid., 165

8 Ch. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: a Treatise on Argumentation, transl. by J. Wilkinson and P. Weaver (Notre Dame, lnd: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), 283

9 Ibid., 286

10 Glover, Jonathan Causing Death and Saving Lives (London: Penguin Books 1977), 165-8Google Scholar

11 Gregory Trianosky, ‘Rule Utilitarianism and the Slippery Slope,’ Journal of Philosophy, 1978; Joel Rudinow, ‘On “The Slippery Slope“', Analysis, 1974

12 I am indebted here to Black's, Max ‘Reasoning with Loose Concepts,’ in Models of Precision (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press 1970).Google Scholar

13 Rudinow, 173-4

14 I owe my awareness of this type of argument from precedence to Professor Robert Pinto, Department of Philosophy, University of Windsor.

15 Example from Gilbert, 103.

16 For'would if performed’ one might sometimes find ‘would risk, if performed'; i.e. the consideration might be that if (a) is performed there is a significant risk of e1, … en– What I have to say about Type Ill would equally well apply if this substitution were made.

17 Reported in a review of a book entitled Dear Dr. Stopes, by Judith Finlayson, in the Globe and Mail for January 13, 1979.

18 Bok, 173

19 Yale Kamisar, ‘Against Euthanasia.'

20 Trianosky, 414