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. (shrink)

Whenever some form of beneficent killing--for example, voluntary euthanasia--is advocated, the proposal is greeted with a flood of slippery-slope arguments warning of the dangers of a Nazi-style slide into genocide. This paper is an attempt systematically to evaluate arguments of this kind. Although there are slippery-slope arguments that are sound and convincing, typical formulations of the Nazi-invoking argument are found to be seriously deficient both in logical rigour and in the social history and psychology required as a scholarly underpinning. As (...) an antidote, an attempt is made both to identify some of the likely causes of genocide and to isolate some of the more modest but legitimate fears that lie behind slippery-slope arguments of this kind. (shrink)

"A sequel to Pollock's How to Build a Person, this volume builds upon that theoretical groundwork for the implementation of rationality through artificial ...

This book provides a systematic analysis of many common argumentation schemes and a compendium of 96 schemes. The study of these schemes, or forms of argument that capture stereotypical patterns of human reasoning, is at the core of argumentation research. Surveying all aspects of argumentation schemes from the ground up, the book takes the reader from the elementary exposition in the first chapter to the latest state of the art in the research efforts to formalize and classify the schemes, outlined (...) in the last chapter. It provides a systematic and comprehensive account, with notation suitable for computational applications that increasingly make use of argumentation schemes. (shrink)

This book provides a systematic analysis of many common argumentation schemes and a compendium of 96 schemes. The study of these schemes, or forms of argument that capture stereotypical patterns of human reasoning, is at the core of argumentation research. Surveying all aspects of argumentation schemes from the ground up, the book takes the reader from the elementary exposition in the first chapter to the latest state of the art in the research efforts to formalize and classify the schemes, outlined (...) in the last chapter. It provides a systematic and comprehensive account, with notation suitable for computational applications that increasingly make use of argumentation schemes. (shrink)

A "slippery slope argument" is a type of argument in which a first step is taken and a series of inextricable consequences follow, ultimately leading to a disastrous outcome. Many textbooks on informal logic and critical thinking treat the slippery slope argument as a fallacy. Walton argues that used correctly in some cases, they can be a reasonable type of argument to shift a burden of proof in a critical discussion, while in other cases they are used incorrectly. Walton identifies (...) and analyzes four types of slippery slope argument. Walton presents guidelines that show how each type of slippery slope argument can be used correctly or incorrectly, using over fifty case studies of argumentation on controversial issues. These include abortion, medical research on human embryos, euthanasia, the decriminalization of marijuana, pornography, and censorship, and banning of American flag burning. (shrink)

The article investigates the validity of two different versions of the slippery slope argument construed in relation to human gene therapy: the empirical and the conceptual argument. The empirical version holds that our accepting somatic cell therapy will eventually cause our accepting eugenic medical goals. The conceptual version holds that we are logically committed to accepting such goals once we have accepted somatic cell therapy. It is argued that neither the empirical nor the conceptual version of the argument can provide (...) a conclusive moral reason for banning somatic cell therapy. According to a third interpretation, referred to as the arbitrary result argument, the many apparent similarities between somatic cell therapy and eugenic-based human genetic engineering drive us to make principled choices concerning what differences and similarities between the two practices should be regarded as morally (ir)relevant. Decisions of this kind are likely to have unpredictable moral consequences. Thus formulated, the slippery slope argument has much plausibility. One objects to somatic cell therapy not so much because of what is at the bottom of the slope on which it lies, but because it is on a slope of which one does not know what is at the bottom. While the arbitrary result argument does not provide a conclusive reason for prohibiting human gene therapy, it reminds of a very important thing: when making bioethical decisions, we should be as specific and as consistent as possible about our basic moral and medical concepts. (shrink)

An abstract framework for structured arguments is presented, which instantiates Dung's ('On the Acceptability of Arguments and its Fundamental Role in Nonmonotonic Reasoning, Logic Programming, and n- Person Games', Artificial Intelligence , 77, 321-357) abstract argumentation frameworks. Arguments are defined as inference trees formed by applying two kinds of inference rules: strict and defeasible rules. This naturally leads to three ways of attacking an argument: attacking a premise, attacking a conclusion and attacking an inference. To resolve such attacks, preferences may (...) be used, which leads to three corresponding kinds of defeat: undermining, rebutting and undercutting defeats. The nature of the inference rules, the structure of the logical language on which they operate and the origin of the preferences are, apart from some basic assumptions, left unspecified. The resulting framework integrates work of Pollock, Vreeswijk and others on the structure of arguments and the nature of defeat and extends it in several respects. Various rationality postulates are proved to be satisfied by the framework, and several existing approaches are proved to be a special case of the framework, including assumption-based argumentation and DefLog. (shrink)

This book traces the development of formal logic from its origins inancient Greece to the present day. The authors first discuss the work oflogicians from Aristotle to Frege, showing how they were influenced by thephilosophical or mathematical ideas of their time. They then examinedevelopments in the present century.

The strength of a slippery slope argument is a matter of some dispute. Some see it as a reasonable argument pointing out what probably or inevitably follows from adopting some practice, others see it as essentially a fallacious argument. However, there seems to be a tendency emerging to say that in many cases, the argument is not actually fallacious, although it may be unsubstantiated. I shall not try to settle this general discussion, but merely seek to assess the strength of (...) the slippery slope argument applied to human gene therapy. The structure of my argument will be the following. First, I shall distinguish between three different versions of the slippery slope argument; two logical versions and an empirical one. Next, I will address human gene therapy in terms of each of the three versions, partly relying on slippery slope arguments against this practice that have already surfaced in the literature. I shall argue that neither version pulls through. The logical versions fail primarily because relevant distinctions can be made between different uses of gene therapy, contrary to what the proponents of the arguments claim. The empirical version fails because there seems to be no evidence supporting the claim that we shall in fact slide down the slope if we engage in gene therapy, and because if we accepted the conclusion that we should not allow gene therapy on the basis of the empirical argument, we should have to make very far-reaching and undesirable modifications in health care in general, in order to be consistent. Or at least so I shall argue. (shrink)