Feb
23
Not All Slippery-Slopes Are Fallacies
Slippery-slopes are all around us, and they can be dangerous. But, the appeal to a slippery-slope fallacy is not always legitimate. To be fair, most people (myself included) are unclear on the types of slippery-slopes and what may or may not make their use a fallacy.
On an episode of the STR podcast last year, a caller presented host Greg Koukl with a question about this. Specifically, the caller had been listening to another apologist, and the issue was raised about people who say “I was born gay, so you have to accept that” as justification for their homosexual attraction and behavior. The unnamed apologist said you need to take the claimer’s logic to its extreme in order to identify the problem. Using the same tactic, one could say, “I was born a murderer, so you have to accept who I am [i.e., my homicidal tendencies],” which most people (including the caller) agree does not follow.
The caller’s question to Greg was “Wouldn’t that be considered a slippery-slope fallacy?” Unfortunately, it was unclear to me whether she was referring to the use of a “born that way” claim as an argument or the unnamed apologist’s recommendation to “follow their logic to its extreme”.
In the explanation that follows, I will adapt Koukl’s response, while tweaking and embellishing here and there to hopefully improve clarity and flow.
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This is an example of the “Taking the Roof Off” tactic (aka reductio ad absurdum). You follow someone’s “reasoning” to its absurd conclusion or consequence. That is, take their point-of-view seriously to see where it logically leads. If it leads to something disastrous (i.e., harmful, foolish, immoral), then there must be something wrong with the view. They started at point X and slipped down to point Y.
There are actually two different types of slippery-slope. One is called a causal (not casual) slippery-slope. This is when the thing that you are considering doing, when taken all by itself and in isolation, may not be bad/wrong/immoral. But, it may lead to something bad/wrong/immoral, which then calls into question the rightfulness of the original act itself.
The Apostle Paul gives an example of this when writing about eating meat sacrificed to idols (1 Cor. 8). He says that that in itself is not wrong for a Christian to do. However, some “weaker” or immature believers think that it is, and by virtue of this conviction, if they see you exercising this appropriate liberty, they might give in to the temptation to do so despite their still-held moral convictions on the matter. Note the causal relationship. Since your action (however innocent) caused a Christian brother/sister to stumble (i.e., fall into sin) in their own eyes, then that calls into question the liberty itself.
The first action (which in actually moral) causes the second action (which is immoral), which then raises questions about the morality of the first action in this circumstance. It is immoral to cause another to do something immoral, even though the initial, causal action is not itself immoral. This “causal slippery-slope” is a fallacy only if a causal relationship is claimed or implied between two actions when there in fact is no such relationship.
Regarding a logical slippery-slope…
As we saw earlier, a claim is made that being gay is justified because “I was born that way.” (We’ll just take the claim as it is for now, without debating its scientific accuracy.) Born that way, so it’s OK. This is an attempt to morally justify not just sexual preferences but homosexual behavior. But it only works if there is a certain line of thinking (reason/logic) that justifies it — i.e., “if I’m born that way, then that makes it morally OK.” Now, if that line of thinking works for homosexuality — that is, if the logic is legitimate — then it can be applied to other things.
For example, what if I claimed, “From a very early age I have felt a terrible anger and hostility toward gays, and I sometimes express this by gaybashing”? Using the same logic as in the other case, “I was born ‘mad and bad’, so you have to accept me and my evil, gaybashing behavior.” If the gay behavior is justified this way, so is my gaybashing. Why not? It’s the same justification. This would be a logical slippery-slope.
As bad as it sounds, this is not necessarily a fallacy, unless the logical relationship that justifies the first thing has been mischaracterized (or misconstrued) OR misapplied in the second case. But, in this case, I don’t think it has been mischaracterized or misapplied.
Now, I don’t know about being “born a murderer”, but there are people who do manifest violent or otherwise evil proclivities from an early age — sometimes referred to as a “bad seed”. For the sake of argument, if certain behaviors could be identified as genetic, such that the person is indeed “born that way”, then we could use it to justify a lot of controversial things. One could say, “I was born heterosexual. As a guy, I have natural, born-that-way, heterosexual attractions to women. So, there can’t be anything morally questionable to my acting out those urges, even with other people’s wives. After all, I was ‘born that way’, and I’m just doing what comes naturally.” Notice we are just applying the same set of rules meant to justify one type of sexual behavior to justify another type. If it works to justify the first, then by virtue of a logical slippery-slope, it works to justify the second.
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In short, if I understand Koukl correctly, the unnamed apologist’s use of reductio ad absurdum to reveal a bad argument was entirely legitimate. It showed that use of the “born that way” argument, taken as is, does indeed lead to a logical slippery slope when applied to other controversial behaviors. But, the apologist cannot call it a logical fallacy unless something about the supposed relationship between the two behaviors — and, remember, the hypothetical claimer of “born this way” did not make any other claims — has been either innocently or intentionally misrepresented.
I don’t know about you, but I found this explanation of causal and logical slippery-slopes and when they are/aren’t fallacies to be very helpful. (However, I recommend looking up more examples online or in books about logic and argumentation.) I also appreciated that he was able to use a scriptural example for one, along with the socio-cultural one he was presented with for the other.
