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    Slippery slope arguments can be fallacious due to vague t... — Carmelics
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    Slippery slope arguments can be fallacious due to vague terms rather than causal relations

    Philosophy of LanguageTruth & Knowledge
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Sorites paradoxes demonstrate that predicates like 'heap' or 'bald' lack determinate boundaries, making incremental reasoning formally invalid.
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    • 2.Slippery slope arguments structurally mirror sorites reasoning by exploiting tolerance principles: if n grains is a heap, so is n-1.
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    • 3.Where the slope's steps depend on such tolerance principles, the argument's force derives from vagueness, not empirical causal chains.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Timothy Williamson's epistemicism notwithstanding, vague predicates create epistemic inaccessibility that licenses conflation of adjacent cases.
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    • 2.When slope arguments chain such conflations across a continuum, the cumulative error is semantic, not a prediction of causal momentum.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.A series of small steps may lead from an acceptable starting point to an unacceptable conclusion
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    • 2.The steps in such a series may depend on vague terms rather than genuine causal relations
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    • 3.Vague terms lack clear boundaries, enabling apparently good reasoning to yield false conclusions
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    Topics

    Philosophy of LanguageTruth & Knowledge

    Connections

    2 topics

    Causation1 linkedModality & Possibility1 linked

    Related

    A series of small steps may lead from an acceptable starting point to an unaccep...Slippery slope arguments structurally mirror sorites reasoning by exploiting tol...Sorites paradoxes demonstrate that predicates like 'heap' or 'bald' lack determi...The steps in such a series may depend on vague terms rather than genuine causal ...
    +4 moreShow less
    Timothy Williamson's epistemicism notwithstanding, vague predicates create epist...Vague terms lack clear boundaries, enabling apparently good reasoning to yield f...When slope arguments chain such conflations across a continuum, the cumulative e...

    Similar

    Slippery slope arguments cannot be automatically dismissed as fallacio...87%Semantical fallaciousness results from the ambiguity of terms used in ...76%Analogical arguments aim at establishing plausibility, not prediction ...74%Ambiguous use of a term can create the illusion that a fallacious argu...73%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: fallacies
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    The weakness in this argument, the reason why it is a fallacy, lies in the second and third causal claims. The series of small steps that lead from an acceptable starting point to an unacceptable conclusion may also depend on vague terms rather than causal relations. Lack of clear boundaries is what enables the puzzling slippery slope arguments known as “the beard” and “the heap.” In the former, a person with a full beard eventually becomes beardless as hairs of the beard are removed one-by-one;
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Where the slope's steps depend on such tolerance principles, the argument's forc...
    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit