Saturday, October 23, 2010

Reasoning in a Chain and the Slippery Slope

One of the concepts that we have learned so far that I believe needs a bit more explanation is the fine line between reasoning in a chain and the slippery slope. According to Epstein reasoning in a chain usually makes a good good argument if the claims and premises make sense and are plausible. An example could be "If I don't get the brakes of my car fixed, I will not be able to go to school tomorrow. If I don't go to school tomorrow then I will miss my philosophy midterm and fail the class. So if I don't get the brakes of my car fixed now I will fail my philosophy midterm. This would be a reasonable argument because the premises and the conclusion are plausible. However these chain arguments can quickly turn into slippery slope which are bad arguments. For example if the same argument turned to "If I don't get the brakes of my car fixed, I will not be able to go to school tomorrow. If I don't go to school tomorrow I will miss my philosophy midterm and fail the class. If I fail my philosophy midterm I will never get into the animation program. And If I don't get into the program I will drop out of school and become a failure. So if I don't get the brakes of my car fixed I will be a loser."
According to a website about slippery slope arguments by Rick Arlikov, "the slippery slope argument is clearly invalid if it is meant to be a point of logic, for it does not follow that "if b is an exception to A, then no part of A is true." The slippery slope cannot be used logically because it does not follow the rules of a good argument.
http://www.garlikov.com/philosophy/slope.htm

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