"Slippery Slope" Notes

Wulf at Atlas Blogged puts up notes on The Slippery Slope worth taking down, including a precision of application clause and arbitrary exceptions.

The latter is most of why I reject assertions that The Slippery Slope is a false argument.

The metaphor refers to identifying the loss of a given value as a precedent to a necessary further loss of values according to the principle of the initial loss.

The "slope" is the symbolic referent of "loss" here. A loss of value is dramatized on the slope, going downhill. The "slippery" aspect refers to effort spent at merely holding value[s] against loss, and this implies protest or rejection of the principle on which the loss is based. (No one ever warns of a "slippery slope" going uphill. This is because the principles underpinning values enhancement do not ordinarily meet with the repression implied in the slope.)

In proper cases that bring Slippery Slope warnings, it is because the principle on which the "first step" is taken is (to some degree) obviously extensible beyond the first step and into such a loss of values that that principle is immediately protestable.

Now, given that it certainly is possible to work out the implications of a principle extended with accurate logic, it simply isn't sane to instantly dismiss a Slippery Slope protest, out of hand. One might not necessarily have seen Zyklon B coming as a matter of detail, but The Holocaust could have been worked out logically from Kristallnacht. It's important to note that the values to be lost on a Slippery Slope are unified by the principle on which they are lost: the Jews lost values ranging from dignity to property to life itself -- an obvious dowhill run -- but it was all because they were Jews.

It is a very important matter to reject any destructive principle with conclusive and logically integral identification of the worst implications, in order to minimize or prevent any certifiable loss of values.

However, another important thing that concerns me is people who will overthrow the logic of the original principle anywhere from the top of the Slope to the bottom, and it concerns me because of the matter of integrity. People who act without or in defiance of consistent application of principles are as dangerous as people who act with dedication to destructive principles.

This is simply because there is no telling what they'll do next.