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In the contexts of debate or of rhetoric, the phrase slippery slope, also appearing as the thin end of the wedge or the camel's nose, refers both to an argument about the likelihood of one event given another, and to a fallacy about the inevitability of one event given another. Invoking the "slippery slope" means predicting (without necessary justification) that one step in a process will lead unavoidably to a second (generally undesirable) step.1 The slippery slope as argument
The slippery-slope argument occurs in the following context: A, B denote events, situations, policies, actions etc. Within this context, the proposer posits the following inferential scheme:
- If A occurs
- then the chances increase that B will occur
The argument takes on one of various semantical forms:
- In one form, the proposer suggests that by making a move in a particular direction, we start down a "slippery slope". Having started down the metaphorical slope, it appears likely that we will continue in the same direction (the arguer usually sees the direction as a negative direction; hence the "sliding downwards" metaphor).
- Another form appears more static, arguing that admitting or permitting A leads to admitting or permitting B, by following a long chain of logical relationships.
1.1 Examples
For example: many civil libertarians argue that even minor increases in government authority, by making them seem less noteworthy, make future increases in that authority more likely: what would once have seemed a huge power grab, the argument goes, now becomes seen as just another incremental increase, and thus appears more palatable (see here for a specific example).
Eugene Volokh's Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope (PDF version) analyzes various types of such slippage. Volokh uses the example "gun registration may lead to gun confiscation" to describe six types of slippage:
- Cost-lowering: Once all gun-owners have registered their firearms, the government will know exactly who to confiscate them from.
- Legal rule combination: Previously the government might need to search every house to confiscate guns, and such a search would violate the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. Registration would eliminate that problem.
- Attitude altering: People may begin to think of gun ownership as a privilege rather than a right, and thus regard gun confiscation less seriously.
- Small change tolerance: People may ignore gun registration because constitutes just a small change, but when combined with other small changes, it could lead to the equivalent of confiscation.
- Political power: The hassle of registration may reduce the number of gun owners, and thus the political power of the gun-ownership bloc.
- Political momentum: Once the government has passed this gun law it becomes easier to pass other gun laws, including laws like confiscation.
2 The slippery slope as fallacy
The slippery slope argument may or may not involve a fallacy (-- see the discussion on the two interpretative paradigms below: the momentum paradigm and the inductive paradigm). However, the slippery slope claim requires independent justification to connect the inevitability of B to an occurrence of A. Otherwise the slippery slope scheme merely serves as a device of sophistry.
Often proponents of a "slippery slope" contention propose a long series of intermediate events as the mechanism of connection leading from A to B. The "camel's nose" provides one example of this: once a camel has managed to place its nose within a tent, the rest of the camel will inevitably follow. In this sense the slippery slope resembles the genetic fallacy, but in reverse.
Arguers also often link the slippery slope fallacy to the straw man fallacy in order to attack the initial position:
- A has occurred (or will or might occur); therefore
- B will inevitably happen. (slippery slope)
- B is wrong; therefore
- A is wrong. (straw man)
This form of argument often provides evaluative judgements on social change: once an exception is made to some rule, nothing will hold back further, more egregious exceptions to that rule.
Note that these arguments may indeed have validity, but they require some independent justification of the connection between their terms: otherwise the argument (as a logical tool) remains fallacious.
The "slippery slope" approach may also relate to the conjunction fallacy: with a long string of steps leading to an undesirable conclusion, the chance of all the steps actually occurring is actually less than the chance of any one individual step occurring alone.
Contemporary examples of the slippery slope fallacy may include:
- If we allow women to abort their unborn children, then soon no life will be held sacred.
- If we forbid partial-birth abortionAbortion in its most common usage, refers to the destruction of an embryo and its removal from the uterus. Medically, the term also refers to the early termination of a pregnancy by natural causes ("spontaneous abortion" or miscarriage, which ends one in, soon all abortion will become illegal.
- If we allow gun registration, then gun confiscation will follow.
- Use of 'soft' drugs such as cannabissee text Cannabis is a genus of dioecious, annual herbs that belong to the family Cannabaceae, which was formerly placed with the nettles in the order Urticales, but is now in the order Rosales. There is phylogenetic controversy as to whether the cultivat will inevitably lead to addiction to 'harder' drugs such as heroinHeroin or diamorphine ( INN) (colloquially referred to as junk, babania, horse, brown, smack, black tar, big H, lady H, dope, skag, juice, etc is an alkaloid opioid. Heroin is the 3,6- diacetyl derivative of morphine (hence diacetylmorphine and is synthes.
- If we allow gay marriage, people will soon want to marry children and animals as well.
