A logical analysis of slippery slope arguments.
This article offers a logical analysis of Slippery Slope Arguments. Such arguments claim that adopting a certain act or policy would take us down a slippery slope to an undesirable bottom and infer from this that we should refrain from this act or policy. Even though a logical assessment of such arguments has not received much careful attention, it is of vital importance to their overall assessment because if the premises fail to support the conclusion an argument is worthless. I partition slippery slope reasoning by means of two dichotomies (reasoning under certainty vs. uncertainty and one-step vs. multiple-step reasoning) into four general categories and evaluate these in turn. The analysis reveals that slippery slope arguments are logically fallacious.
Spielthenner
Georg
G
Department of Philosophy and Applied Ethics, The University of Zambia, Canada Court B3, P.O. Box 32967, Lusaka, Zambia. georg_spielthenner@yahoo.de
D001675:Bioethics; D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D008128:Logic; D035501:Uncertainty; D035761:Wedge Argument