On 11/11/03 5:59 PM, "Delirium" <delirium(a)rufus.d2g.com> wrote:
The Cunctator wrote:
Again, a slippery slope argument and an inductive
argument are not
equivalent. There's a reason the words are different.
A quick scan of recent media seems to argue differently: there are
numerous uses of the term "slippery slope" by politicians arguing
against the Patriot Act, for example, who argue that it makes it easier
for future government power grabs. This is, by your terminology, an
inductive argument, but widely referred to as a "slippery slope"
argument by those actually making the argument. A typical phrase is
"this starts us on a slippery slope towards...". Opponents of the
recent partial-birth abortion ban act have made similar arguments, that
this is the first step towards further restrictions on abortion.
Moving past semantics, the important thing here is that proponents of the
Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act have explicitly expressed their desire to ban
all abortion.
Similarly, the Bush administration has proposed legislation extending the
Patriot Act.
It is one thing to argue "x is the vanguard of sweeping change" when the
proponents of x also are proposing sweeping change. It is another thing when
the proponents of x do not propose such sweeping change.
Not that I'm saying x is never the vanguard of such changes. I'm as
suspicious of creature feep and slippery slopes as anyone except, perhaps,
hard-core moral conservatives.
For a rigorous treatment of the legitimate use of
slippery slope
arguments in their numerous forms, see "The Mechanisms of the Slippery
Slope", a forthcoming book by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh,
available online in draft form:
http://www1.law.ucla.edu/~volokh/slippery.htm
This is a valuable resource for understanding how to usefully analyze
slippery-slope arguments by exploring the mechanisms by which A is connected
to B.
e.g.
This: "gun registration will lead to gun confiscation" is a fallacious
slippery-slope argument, and not terribly constructive.
But it *is* constructive to say:
"Gun registration may lead to gun confiscation through the following
mechanisms:
* Registration may change people¹s attitudes about the propriety of
confiscation, by making them view gun possession not as a right but as a
privilege that the government grants and therefore may deny.
* Registration may be seen as a small enough change that people will
reasonably ignore it (³I¹m too busy to worry about little things like
this²), but when aggregated with a sequence of other small changes,
registration can ultimately lead to confiscation, or something close to it.
* The enactment of registration requirements can create political
momentum in favor of gun control supporters, thus making it easier for them
to persuade legislators to enact confiscation.
* Non-gun-owners are more likely than gun owners to support
confiscation. If registration is onerous enough, over time it may
discourage some people from buying guns, thus diminish the fraction of the
public that owns guns, diminish the political power of the gun-owner voting
bloc, and increase the likelihood that confiscation will be politically
feasible.
* Registration may lower the cost of confiscationsince the government
would know which people¹s houses to search if the residents don¹t turn in
their guns voluntarilyand thus make confiscation more appealing.
* Registration may trigger the operation of other legal rules that make
confiscation easier and thus more cost-effective: When guns aren¹t
registered, confiscation would be largely unenforceable, since
house-to-house searches to find guns would violate the Fourth Amendment; but
if guns are registered some years before confiscation is enacted, the
registration database might provide probable cause to search the houses of
all registered gun owners."
Of course, some of those arguments are weaker than others, but it's a *lot*
better than simply saying "gun registration will lead to gun confiscation".