The Language of Argument

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cHaP Te r 1 3 ■ F a l l a c i e s o f V a g u e n e s s

creates a paradox to which they have no solution. These views become com-

plicated and technical, so we will not discuss them here. Suffice it to say that

almost everyone agrees that conclusions like (3*) and (199,999,999,999) are

false, so arguments from the heap are unsound for one reason or another.

That is why such arguments are labeled fallacies.

Where exactly do you think arguments from the heap go astray?

Discussion Question

Slippery Slopes

Near cousins to arguments from the heap are slippery-slope arguments, but

they reach different conclusions. Whereas heap arguments conclude that

nothing has a certain property, such as baldness, a slippery-slope argument

could be trotted out to try to show that there is no real or defensible or sig-

nificant or important difference between being bald and not being bald. The

claim is not that no change occurs because the person who loses all his hair

is still not bald, as in an argument from the heap. Instead, the slippery-slope

argument claims that we should not classify people as either bald or not

bald, because there is no significant difference between these classifications.

Whether a difference is significant depends on a variety of factors. In par-

ticular, what is significant for one purpose might not be significant for other

purposes. Different concerns then yield different kinds of slippery-slope ar-

guments. We will discuss three kinds, beginning with conceptual slippery-

slope arguments.

Conceptual Slippery-Slope Arguments

Conceptual slippery-slope arguments try to show that things at opposite

ends of a continuum do not differ in any way that would be important

enough to justify drawing a distinction in one’s concepts or theories. Such

arguments often seem to depend on the following principles:

1. We should not draw a distinction between things that are not
   significantly different.


2. If A is not significantly different from B, and B is not significantly
   different from C, then A is not significantly different from C.
   This first principle is interesting, complicated, and at least generally true. We
   shall examine it more closely in a moment. The second principle is obviously
   false. As already noted, a series of insignificant differences can add up to a

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