The Slippery Slope arguement

Zyphlin said:

I don't think the fallacy is simply in the use of it, but in the belief that somehow the slippery slope itself if reason enough for an argument or view to be dismissed.

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It depends on the subject.

The US has been on the well greased slope to socialism since Wilson. Look at where it's gotten us today, with fiscal insolvency and rising unemployment.

There is a distinct difference between "slippery slope" arguments and "probability arguments".

A probability argument uses existing data that suggests the existence of A will likely lead to B. It is employs deductive reasoning, without making false analogies.

For example:

Premise one: Prior data suggests that severe snowstorms are followed by an increase in car accidents for a 24 hour period after the storm hits.

Premise two: There is a severe snowstorm predicted to hit on Tuesday night.

Premise three: Avoiding driving in cars prevents one from being in car accidents.

Conclusion one: There will probably be an increase in car accidents on Wednesday.

Conclusion two: Wednesday would be a good day to avoid driving in a car if one does not want to be in a car accident.

In this case we are making an argument based on prior data that is comparable. The conclusions are valid. It does not mean that it will always happen this way, but the probability is based on past experience.


A slippery slope argument, however, uses inductive reasoning, data from multiple unrelated cases, and employs false analogies.

Example:

Premise one: Prior data suggests that severe snowstorms are followed by an increase in car accidents for a 24 hour period after the storm hits.

Premise two: Car accidents are the primary cause of death for teenagers.

Premise three: There is a severe snowstorm predicted to hit on Tuesday night.

Premise four: Avoiding driving in a cars prevents one from being in car accidents.

Conclusion one: It is likely that more teenagers will die on Wednesday than any other day this week.

Conclusion two: Teenagers should not be allowed in cars on Wednesday.

This conclusion is invalid because the data does not state the severity of the accidents nor does it state the propensity for teenage drivers to get into car accidents within 24 hours of a snowstorm. It could be true that the majority of car accidents are minor, non-fatal collisions and that teenagers are not as likely as other drivers to get into these accidents.

The slippery slope argument is always logically invalid because it always relies on inductive reasoning. Even though all the premises may indeed be true on their own, they are totally unrelated and they don't logically follow to reach the conclusion.

Slippery Slopes require one to make an intuitive "leaps" from one premise to the other without a necessary step in the logical pathway. Thus, they are logically invalid arguments.

But that does not mean that the conclusions are always false. They may indeed be accurate predictions, they just came from invalid logic.


Also, some slippery slope arguments have the potential to become logically valid predictive arguments.

In the slippery slope example I gave above, the existence of the premise: "The frequency, severity, and demographics of the participants in car accidents after snowstorms is proportionally identical to accidents that occur in other conditions" would validate that argument because the existence of this premise would cause the rest of the premises to become related.

Obviously, the veracity of each premise, as with any argument, is a big issue. Also, a logically valid argument does not always need to have a true conclusion. Sometimes a logically valid argument fails to acknowledge confounding premises. For example, if, in the first argument, Wednesday were a holiday, and far fewer people drive on holidays than normal, it could negate the veracity of the conclusion without invalidating the logic that was given.

Finally, I made up the arguments above off the top of my head for illustrative purposes. If I have some flaw of logic in either of them, please forgive me. They weren't overly thought-out.

Depends-I don't think gay marriage will lead to ceremonies involving sheep or goats. On the other hand in the gun control movement, the gun haters have continually admitted that they are using an incremental approach to gun bans (Charles Krauthammer's paen to the clinton gun ban is an example) and thus the slippery slope argument is completely valid when it comes to the plotting of the ARC

With respect to Gay Marriage the slippery slope would be an invalid argument if the gay marriages were all appoved thru the State Legeslaturers and the courts only interpeted law thru its original meaning. The problem we have is that an activist Judge could interpet the law allowing gay marriage to allow beatiality or poligamy (or polyandary).

If that is not overturned by the legeslature (think the political mischief that could occur if a legeslature is devided sharply and cannot be brought together on even this issue or it is used as coersion that it wont be delt with if the other side doesnt cave in on an issue or two) or by a higher court which may expect the legislature to do their job or is allready overburdend with other caseloads. (Think of the case being entered as collusion and stealthely delt with.)

What would one need to justify the validity of "slippery slope" arguments beyond taxation schemes of all types and at all levels?

Most of the time people's "slippery slope" arguments are based on their own emotional hysteria and not much else. In my mind, a true slippery slope must establish causation between a series of points, based on an original premise. If one's opponent can debunk even one point in the chain, then the whole premise is wrong... and if the slippery slope cannot even be proven with evidence in the first place, then it's opinionation and nothing more.

Slippery slopes are usually due to lack of creative thinking. When I see one, I'm immediately on guard.

TurtleDude said:

Depends-I don't think gay marriage will lead to ceremonies involving sheep or goats. On the other hand in the gun control movement, the gun haters have continually admitted that they are using an incremental approach to gun bans (Charles Krauthammer's paen to the clinton gun ban is an example) and thus the slippery slope argument is completely valid when it comes to the plotting of the ARC

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The gun control thing is a probability argument, not slippery slope. There is a premise that exists, and is supported by the data, that "Many of the proponents of gun control would prefer to see an all-out ban on guns and are planning on achieving this goal incrementally". The existence of that premise means that you are still using deductive logic and not using a false analogy.

The gay marriage thing is a slippery slope argument because it is not supported by evidence. There exists no premise that "Gay marriage is being fought for so that the ultimate ends of marrying a goat can occur". It is inductive and employs a false analogy.

Just clarifying the differences.

We're a nation that believes in the rule of law and an important part of our legal system is precedent. So a good slippery slope argument would be like this: "Your logic for supporting position A is this. Applying that logic as precedent it could be used to justify X, Y, and Z." That's a fair question and reasonable look at the possible unintended consequences of certain actions.

When the slippery slope gets a bad rap is its often combined with strawmen to apply a whole new argument to get some radical extreme result. Like the argument that gay marriage would lead to people marrying their pets. No one has removed or even questioned the idea of consenting adults with legal standing being the only ones eligible for marriage, so saying gay marriage will lead to beastiality marriages is just silly.

emdash said:

typical liberal response. let's pretend our actions don't have ramifications, that precedents don't matter, blah blah blah.

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It's not that actions cannot have ramifications, it's the assertion that an action will have massive ramifications down the road that cannot be demonstrated, cannot be supported, only asserted.

That's why the slippery slope is a logical fallacy.

I find the "Slippery Slope Argument" to be a fallacy most of the time. The challenge being to go from A > B > C > D, etc... In order for your chain to work you have to be careful to show each contingency to be factually established before a relevant conclusion can be drawn.