First you begin by positing that “slippery slope” isn’t a fallacy, and before you know it, the camel is in the tent and eating your grapes.
While I’m not concerned about camels eating MY grapes, it’s true that they’ll happily eat grapes if given the chance.
Which side do you think is having their valid concerns dismissed? How do you know they’re valid?
Someone’s fishing for political opinions. Anyways, how I know if they’re valid or not is by considering their logic and likelihood, not just dismissing an opposing view as “slippery slope” and moving on.
Ah; in that case the fallacy is reductionism. Slippery slope is the excuse.
I’m starting to feel like you’re exactly who I had in mind, knows the names of all the logical fallacies but lacks a real understanding of the concepts, just uses them as dismissive magic wands
Ah, then you didn’t get what I was doing with my response.
The thing about actual fallacies is that they are about flawed logic. If a fallacy is being used, that means the conclusion is not actually warranted by the evidence and logic.
It says nothing about whether the conclusion is true, just that the path taken to arrive at the conclusion is flawed and not worthy of further consideration.
So when someone names a fallacy to dismiss what someone is saying, they’re not arguing that the person’s stance is wrong and doesn’t deserve further consideration, they’re arguing that the person’s logic to arrive there is flawed and does not deserve further consideration.
Slippery slope is a fallacy because it argues that if certain steps are taken, others will inevitably follow that wouldn’t follow if the first steps were never taken.
So “it’s a slippery slope from playing violent video games to mass murdering your friends and family” is the fallacy; “it’s a slippery slope from taking fentanyl to becoming an addict” is not.
That’s kinda what I mean, often the scenario isn’t a logical fallacy at all, but people who basically misunderstand the concept just bleat it out regardless.
So… it isn’t ALWAYS a fallacy. In its purest, a slippery-slope argument is of the following form:
“If A, which some people want, is done or allowed, then B, which most people don’t want, will inevitably follow. Therefore, let’s not do or allow A.”
The fallacy occurs when that form is not fleshed out by sufficient reasons to believe that B will inevitably follow from A, such as in the following examples:
- “The US should put the Ten Commandments into schools. If they don’t, then everyone will be worshipping Satan within a few generations."
- “We’ve got to stop them from banning pornography. Once they ban one form of literature, they will never stop. Next thing you know, they will be banning all books!”
In these examples, the conclusion does not follow deductively from the premise. Nor is any reason given to believe that a chain of events set in motion by the act described in the premise will inevitably lead to what’s described in the conclusion. Heck, the above examples are not even good inductive logic.
So you’re absolutely correct in saying that not all slippery-slope arguments are fallacies, it just takes logic in between, and that’s something a lot of people struggle with.
So you’re absolutely correct in saying that not all slippery-slope arguments are fallacies, it just takes logic in between, and that’s something a lot of people struggle with.
This is the problem with the fallacy-touting crowd. They only partially understand what the fallacy actually is. Not all, as you pointed out, slippery slope arguments are fallacious, but if you make a sound slippery slope some “fallacy expert” will chime in and trumpet how bad your argument is because they only half-spotted the pattern.
In a similar vein, personal abuse is not the ad hominem fallacy. And an ad hominem argument is also not automatically fallacious. Examples:
- You’re wrong, you piece of shit, because of <insert list of valid reasons>. (Uncouth, yes, but not the ad hominem fallacy.)
- “My client claims he didn’t attack you.” “Of course he does! He’d be an idiot to admit he did!” (An ad hominem argument, but not the ad hominem fallacy.)
- You’re wrong because you’re a Nazi. (An actual ad hominem fallacy! You can find this particular one in the wild … pretty much Internet-wide.)
I once thought I was clever by coining the term “fallacy fallacy” for dealing with the mouth-breathers who screech “FALLACY!!!” while flapping their arms wildly as if attempting to launch themselves to the moon. Unfortunately I was beaten to the punch by decades.
