The Slippery Slope Argument is NOT a fallacy

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It has been explained perfectly well before, but this is still bugging me: escalating events are not what is referred to as "slippery slope fallacy" - the slippery slope fallacy is a style of argumentation, like an ad hominem attack.

Using it to describe just any chain of events, domino effect, or escalation is just not how the phrase is used.

Sometimes it's a fallacy, but honestly, I usually see efforts to label it a fallacy as bad faith attempts at intellectual base stealing, trying to win arguments by disqualifying the other guy rather than actually debating their points.

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Last edited by thinkinginpictures on 12 Jan 2022, 9:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

True.

But in order to claim the argument itself as a fallacy, it must be logically invalid.
To make slippery-slope argumentation logically invalid would be the same as saying there's no causality.

If you accept causality as reality, the slippery slope argument will nevere be a fallacy. However, it depends on the logic driving the slippery slope and the likelyhood/probability of any of the resulting scenarios.

The axioms must be true nonetheless, but that's the same for ANY argument.

Negative actions often lead to negative consequences.

Yes I think that can happen, rather like the "ad hominem" thing - somebody says those magic words and it shuts down the other person, though it reality ad-hominem arguments aren't always complete rubbish. As you say, it's better to debate the actual point they're making than just to throw a pejorative label at it.

Nothing to do with the Slippery Slop argument.

Simple cause and effect does not make an argument a slippery slope argument.

Its not enough to say A will cause B.

It has to be a slope that we slide down into, sliding past increasingly bad points, until we arrive a rock bottom hell, like a bug falling into carnivorous pitcher plant.

So a slippery slope argument would be "If we allow A, it may seem okay, but then it will set a precedent to allow B (slightly worse), which will set a precedent for later allowing C, which allow a precedent for allowing D, and someday we will be in the living hell of E! "

The year is 1921, and the nation is considering allowing women to vote. you're a right thinking gentleman of that era who is against that nonsense. So you argue that "if we let women have the vote now, then later that will lead to women wanting better jobs, women holding office, and hundred years from now even running for POTUS, and in a 100 years women will be getting tattoos! Cant have THAT." That would be a "slippery slope" argument. And in that case you would have been right! But thats because each descent down the slope was likely to occur.

On the other hand THE main argument used during the Sixties and Seventies to keep the US in Vietnam was the "Domino Effect" argument. Which was similar to "the slippery slope" argument. The Domino theory went "if we pull out and allow the communist to have South Vietnam then other countries in the region will fall like dominoes, and the Communist will later take over Thailand, India...Indonesia, and in a few years the Communist will have taken over the whole Pacific, and will be knocking at our door in California, and we will need to fight an even bloodier war to drive them from our shores. We did loose South Vietnam. But it did not result in other nations in the region "falling like dominoes" as predicted in the argument. And in fact it was the communist world that ended up collapsing.

So the lesson is that the "slippery slope" argument is not intrinsically a fallacy. The key is to examine 'the slope' in question to see how "slippery" it really is. That is to examine how likely each step in the descent into the supposed hell that the person is fearmongering you about is likely to result from the previous step. It might be a fallacy in some cases, but not in others.