Fallacious Fallacy: Defending the Slippery Slope
Posted on Friday January 5, 2007 at 3:18pm.
While preparing my ENGL 102 (Persuasive Writing and Reading) course syllabus, I ran across this in the textbook's section on logical fallacies:
Back to slippery slopes. To argue that giving in on any aspect of a position automatically leads to the most extreme outcome is indeed a fallacy. But to characterize the slippery slope argument as automatic and to use "soon," as the author does, is to commit another fallacy, called creating a Straw Man. If a slippery slope argument were always something like, "If we let the state government issue tickets for speeding, we'll all end up in work camps just like in the old Soviet Union," it would indeed be a logical fallacy. The environmentalist claim from the textbook above is certainly a fallacy. (The abortion one, perhaps less so, given the way the law works--minus the "soon"). A real slippery slope argument, rather than a Straw Man constructed for the purpose of being defeated, is more subtle and harder to dismiss. It goes something like this:
If we look at our system of laws and the courts, we see the central role played by precedent. Many of the laws currently on the books could never have been passed were it not for other laws, less radical, that were passed first. There are some laws that are radical departures from the laws that came before, I'm sure, but lots of them went through steps. Laws and the way the laws come to be interpreted often go through a series of transition steps.
Affirmative action originally entailed reaching out to find the most qualified people, regardless of race, and was about opening up opportunities to people who otherwise would not even know about the opportunities. But it was explicitly stated that affirmative action was not about granting preferences or quotas to minorities. Affirmative action means something different today. Whatever your position on affirmative action, it is clear that the less radical step came first, and that it led to the second, more radical step, that came second. It perhaps did not have to lead to the second step, but it did lead to it. Anyone, at the time, who said that affirmative action, in the first-step sense, would lead to affirmative action, in the second-step sense, could have been accused of committing a slippery slope fallacy.
When the Big Tobacco lawsuits were going on, people were always making slippery slope arguments. "Who are they going to sue next, fattening food?" A slippery slope argument, to be sure. But a fallacy? Try making and selling a donut using trans fat in New York City and see how much they fine you. Which is not to champion trans fats. But who knows where any of this will lead or end? People are already being dismissed for making slippery slope predictions about the future of the freedom to eat and sell "unhealthy food." Time will tell.
The NRA and gun rights proponents often use a slippery slope argument. They don't want to give an inch on the Second Amendment, because they believe that if they do, the precedent will be set, and it is only a matter of time--perhaps a long matter of time--until the law goes through step after step, and what may have started as a restriction that would affect very few people, would result in substantial limits on the right to own a firearm. Leaving aside your view of guns or the Second Amendment, just taking a look at the number of laws today compared to the number of laws half a century ago, on guns or any other issue, lends some credence to the NRA's concern.
The same argument applies to all sort of issues. For example, banning certain works of "art" or extreme pornography would not affect many people, and these works might not have many defenders, but we are still wary of doing it partly because we don't want to grant government that power, because we don't know where it might wield it in the future. It's a slippery slope argument. But I think it's a sound one.
It would be a fallacy to express certainty that every step will lead to disaster, but those who understand the slippery slope are usually careful not to go that far. Not every step leads to the worst possible extreme, and often even when the slope is slippery, the slide is a slow one. Maybe in some cases the slippery slope is leading in a direction you prefer. Some argue that increasing economic freedom in China is a first step that will lead to more freedoms, the beginnings of a slippery slope on the way to an open society. Again, who knows? But it is not a fallacy to believe that changes in society can have ramifications beyond the limits of the change itself.
Besides the law, which explicitly operates on precedent, culture itself operates on precedent. New norms are established, new behavior is accepted, and the next generation often pushes those limits, and within a few generations, the gap can be tremendous. This is true whether we're talking about the role of women in society, the divorce rate, the public behavior of children or teenagers, the kind of violence or sex or language on television. I'm not making a conservative argument here to shout "halt" at the march of history. And I'm not calling for oppressing individual choice, or even expressing a preference for "the good old days." And I do know that it isn't always as simple as a straight line--there are ebbs and flows to cultural patterns (more so than legal ones, I think).
I am saying this: The slope is indeed often slippery. Noting it when we are considering policy decisions does not mean we embrace logical fallacies. It means we're paying attention. I, for one, will encourage my students to learn the textbook descriptions of "logical fallacies," and to think about them critically. Finally, it could be argued that some predicted slippery slope results do not come true because people, aware of the slippery slope, are on guard against them.
Source: Wood, Nancy V. Perspectives on Argument, 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. pp. 233-34.
Slippery Slope. The slippery-slope fallacy is a scare tactic that suggests that if we allow one thing to happen, we will immediately be sliding down the slippery slope to disaster. This fallacy is sometimes introduced into environmental and abortion issues. If we allow loggers to cut a few trees, we will soon lose all the forests. Or if a woman is required to wait twenty-four hours to reconsider her decision to have an abortion, soon there will be so many restrictions that no one will be able to have an abortion. This fallacy is similar to the saying about the camel that gets its nose into the tent. If we permit the nose today, we have the whole camel to deal with tomorrow. It is better not to start because disaster may result.We could also add, "If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile." It is interesting that the two examples above are critical of arguments sometimes made by those holding traditionally "liberal" positions, pro-abortion rights and pro-environmentalism. From what I can tell from perusing the textbook, which contains a book excerpt critiquing capitalism's supposed excess of choice and has lots of the usual focus on race and ethnicity, the author is hardly pushing a conservative agenda. Maybe there's hope that the book is a bit more balanced than some others I've seen (a recent one was obsessed with racism to the point of alienating many students). I'll report on that when I know more.
Back to slippery slopes. To argue that giving in on any aspect of a position automatically leads to the most extreme outcome is indeed a fallacy. But to characterize the slippery slope argument as automatic and to use "soon," as the author does, is to commit another fallacy, called creating a Straw Man. If a slippery slope argument were always something like, "If we let the state government issue tickets for speeding, we'll all end up in work camps just like in the old Soviet Union," it would indeed be a logical fallacy. The environmentalist claim from the textbook above is certainly a fallacy. (The abortion one, perhaps less so, given the way the law works--minus the "soon"). A real slippery slope argument, rather than a Straw Man constructed for the purpose of being defeated, is more subtle and harder to dismiss. It goes something like this:
If we look at our system of laws and the courts, we see the central role played by precedent. Many of the laws currently on the books could never have been passed were it not for other laws, less radical, that were passed first. There are some laws that are radical departures from the laws that came before, I'm sure, but lots of them went through steps. Laws and the way the laws come to be interpreted often go through a series of transition steps.
Affirmative action originally entailed reaching out to find the most qualified people, regardless of race, and was about opening up opportunities to people who otherwise would not even know about the opportunities. But it was explicitly stated that affirmative action was not about granting preferences or quotas to minorities. Affirmative action means something different today. Whatever your position on affirmative action, it is clear that the less radical step came first, and that it led to the second, more radical step, that came second. It perhaps did not have to lead to the second step, but it did lead to it. Anyone, at the time, who said that affirmative action, in the first-step sense, would lead to affirmative action, in the second-step sense, could have been accused of committing a slippery slope fallacy.
When the Big Tobacco lawsuits were going on, people were always making slippery slope arguments. "Who are they going to sue next, fattening food?" A slippery slope argument, to be sure. But a fallacy? Try making and selling a donut using trans fat in New York City and see how much they fine you. Which is not to champion trans fats. But who knows where any of this will lead or end? People are already being dismissed for making slippery slope predictions about the future of the freedom to eat and sell "unhealthy food." Time will tell.
The NRA and gun rights proponents often use a slippery slope argument. They don't want to give an inch on the Second Amendment, because they believe that if they do, the precedent will be set, and it is only a matter of time--perhaps a long matter of time--until the law goes through step after step, and what may have started as a restriction that would affect very few people, would result in substantial limits on the right to own a firearm. Leaving aside your view of guns or the Second Amendment, just taking a look at the number of laws today compared to the number of laws half a century ago, on guns or any other issue, lends some credence to the NRA's concern.
The same argument applies to all sort of issues. For example, banning certain works of "art" or extreme pornography would not affect many people, and these works might not have many defenders, but we are still wary of doing it partly because we don't want to grant government that power, because we don't know where it might wield it in the future. It's a slippery slope argument. But I think it's a sound one.
It would be a fallacy to express certainty that every step will lead to disaster, but those who understand the slippery slope are usually careful not to go that far. Not every step leads to the worst possible extreme, and often even when the slope is slippery, the slide is a slow one. Maybe in some cases the slippery slope is leading in a direction you prefer. Some argue that increasing economic freedom in China is a first step that will lead to more freedoms, the beginnings of a slippery slope on the way to an open society. Again, who knows? But it is not a fallacy to believe that changes in society can have ramifications beyond the limits of the change itself.
Besides the law, which explicitly operates on precedent, culture itself operates on precedent. New norms are established, new behavior is accepted, and the next generation often pushes those limits, and within a few generations, the gap can be tremendous. This is true whether we're talking about the role of women in society, the divorce rate, the public behavior of children or teenagers, the kind of violence or sex or language on television. I'm not making a conservative argument here to shout "halt" at the march of history. And I'm not calling for oppressing individual choice, or even expressing a preference for "the good old days." And I do know that it isn't always as simple as a straight line--there are ebbs and flows to cultural patterns (more so than legal ones, I think).
I am saying this: The slope is indeed often slippery. Noting it when we are considering policy decisions does not mean we embrace logical fallacies. It means we're paying attention. I, for one, will encourage my students to learn the textbook descriptions of "logical fallacies," and to think about them critically. Finally, it could be argued that some predicted slippery slope results do not come true because people, aware of the slippery slope, are on guard against them.
Source: Wood, Nancy V. Perspectives on Argument, 5th ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. pp. 233-34.