Off-campus access
Using PhilPapers from home?
Click here to configure this browser for off-campus access.
- Justin Oakley & Dean Cocking (2005). Consequentialism, Complacency, and Slippery Slope Arguments. Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 26 (3).The standard problem with many slippery slope arguments is that they fail to provide us with the necessary evidence to warrant our believing that the significantly morally worse circumstances they predict will in fact come about. As such these arguments have widely been criticised as ‘scare-mongering’. Consequentialists have traditionally been at the forefront of such criticisms, demanding that we get serious about guiding our prescriptions for right action by a comprehensive appreciation of the empirical facts. This is not surprising, since consequentialism has traditionally been committed to the idea that right action be driven by empirical realities, and this hard-headed approach has been an especially notable feature of Australian consequentialism. But this apparent empirical hard-headedness is very selective. While consequentialists have understood their moral outlook and commitments as guided by a partnership with empirical science – most explicitly in their replies to the arguments of their detractors – some consequentialists have been remarkably complacent about providing empirical support for their own prescriptions. Our key example here is the consequentialist claim that our current practises of partiality in fact maximise the good, impartially conceived. This claim has invariably been made without compelling support for the large empirical claims upon which it rests, and so, like the speculative empirical hand-waving of weak slippery slope arguments, it seems similarly to be undermined. While these arguments have presented us with ‘wishful thinking’ rather than ‘scare-mongering’, we argue in this paper that their complacency in meeting the relevant empirical justificatory burden remains much the same.Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
| Export citation | Scholar | At my library 
Similar books and articles
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... This paper addresses a problem about epistemic warrant. The problem is posed by philosophical arguments for externalism about the contents of thoughts, and similarly by philosophical arguments for architecturalism about thinking, when these arguments are put together with a thesis of first person authority. In each case, first personal knowledge about our thoughts plus the kind of knowledge that is provided by a philosophical argument seem, together, to open an unacceptably ‘non-empirical’ route to knowledge of empirical facts. Furthermore, this unwelcome prospect of transferring a ‘non-empirical’ warrant from premises about our own mental states and about philosophical theory to a conclusion about external environment or internal architecture seems to depend upon little more than the possibility of knowledge by inference. (The use of the scare-quoted term ‘non-empirical’ is explained a couple of paragraphs further on.).
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Rationality (or something similar) is usually given as the relevant difference between all humans and animals; the reason humans do but animals do not deserve moral consideration. But according to the Argument from Marginal Cases not all humans are rational, yet if such (marginal) humans are morally considerable despite lacking rationality it would be arbitrary to deny animals with similar capacities a similar level of moral consideration. The slippery slope objection has it that although marginal humans are not strictly speaking morally considerable, we should give them moral consideration because if we do not we will slide down a slippery slope where we end up by not giving normal humans due consideration. I argue that this objection fails to show that marginal humans have the kind of direct moral status proponents of the slippery slope argument have in mind.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... The article investigates the validity of two different versions of the slippery slope argument construed in relation to human gene therapy: the empirical and the conceptual argument. The empirical version holds that our accepting somatic cell therapy will eventually cause our accepting eugenic medical goals. The conceptual version holds that we are logically committed to accepting such goals once we have accepted somatic cell therapy. It is argued that neither the empirical nor the conceptual version of the argument can provide a conclusive moral reason for banning somatic cell therapy. According to a third interpretation, referred to as the arbitrary result argument, the many apparent similarities between somatic cell therapy and eugenic-based human genetic engineering drive us to make principled choices concerning what differences and similarities between the two practices should be regarded as morally (ir)relevant. Decisions of this kind are likely to have unpredictable moral consequences. Thus formulated, the slippery slope argument has much plausibility. One objects to somatic cell therapy not so much because of what is at the bottom of the slope on which it lies, but because it is on a slope of which one does not know what is at the bottom. While the arbitrary result argument does not provide a conclusive reason for prohibiting human gene therapy, it reminds of a very important thing: when making bioethical decisions, we should be as specific and as consistent as possible about our basic moral and medical concepts.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... A "slippery slope argument" is a type of argument in which a first step is taken and a series of inextricable consequences follow, ultimately leading to a disastrous outcome. Many textbooks on informal logic and critical thinking treat the slippery slope argument as a fallacy. Walton argues that used correctly in some cases, they can be a reasonable type of argument to shift a burden of proof in a critical discussion, while in other cases they are used incorrectly. Walton identifies and analyzes four types of slippery slope argument. Walton presents guidelines that show how each type of slippery slope argument can be used correctly or incorrectly, using over fifty case studies of argumentation on controversial issues. These include abortion, medical research on human embryos, euthanasia, the decriminalization of marijuana, pornography, and censorship, and banning of American flag burning.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Our actions, individually and collectively, inevitably affect others, ourselves, and our institutions. They shape the people we become and the kind of world we inhabit. Sometimes those consequences are positive, a giant leap for moral humankind. Other times they are morally regressive. This propensity of current actions to shape the future is morally important. But slippery slope arguments are a poor way to capture it. That is not to say we can never develop cogent slippery slope arguments. Nonetheless, given their most common usage, it would be prudent to avoid them in moral and political debate. They are often fallacious and have often been used for ill. They are normally used to defend the moral status quo. Even when they are cogent, we can always find an alternate way to capture their insights. Finally, by accepting that the moral roads on which we travel are slippery, we become better able to successfully navigate them.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: hughlafollette.com jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: hughlafollette.com jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Slippery slope arguments (SSAs) are, so I argue, arguments from consequences which have the following peculiar characteristic: They take advantage of our being less than perfect in making-and acting according to-distinctions. But then, once SSAs are seen for what they are, they can be turned against themselves. Being less than perfect at making the second-order distinction between distinctions we're good at abiding by and those we're bad at abiding by, we're bound to fail to make the distinction between good and bad SSAs. One can therefore construct an SSA, the conclusion of which is, that we ought not to use SSAs. After characterizing SSAs and constructing the SSA against the use of SSAs, I then explore its implications.
No categories
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | More options ...
| | Scholar | More options ... Michael Clark has recently argued that the slippery slope argument against voluntary euthanasia is ‘entirely consequentialist’ and that its use to justify continued prohibition of voluntary euthanasia involves a failure to treat patients who request assistance in ending their lives as ends in themselves. This article agues that in fact the slippery slope is consistent with most forms of deontology, and that it need not involve any violation of the principle that people should be treated as ends, depending upon how that principle is construed. It is concluded that supporters of voluntary euthanasia cannot dismiss the slippery slope argument on the basis of deontological principles but must take seriously the consequences that it postulates and engage in factual argument about their likely extent and about the likely effectiveness of any proposed safeguards.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: blackwell-synergy.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: blackwell-synergy.com dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... One frequent argument in the debate over federal funding of human embryo research is the slippery slope argument. Slope arguments can be of several types: either logical, empirical, or full (a combination of logical and empirical slope arguments, with an additional psychological premise). A full slope argument against human embryo research suggests that funding embryo reseach could undermine current protections for human subjects research, erode respect for persons with disabilities, and encourage eugenics practices. While the Panel commissioned by the National Institutes of Health to issue funding guidelines regarding human embryo research acknowledges some slippery slope concerns, the Panel's final report fails to address such concerns in any depth. Given this failure seriously to address these valid concerns, federal funding of embryo research should not proceed at this time. Keywords: embryo, human, slippery slope CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this?
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... One prevalent type of slippery slope argument has the following form: (1) by doing some initial act now, we will bring it about that we subsequently do some more extreme version of this act, and (2) we should not bring it about that we do this further act, therefore (3) we should not do the initial act. Such arguments are frequently regarded as mistaken, often
on the grounds that they rely on speculative or insufficiently strong empirical premises. In this article I point out another location at which these arguments may go wrong: I argue that, in their standard form, the truth of their empirical premises constitutes evidence for the falsity of their normative premises. If we will, as predicted, do the further act in the future, this gives us at least a prima facie reason to believe that the performance of this further act would be good, and thus something we should try to bring about. I end by briefly assessing the dialectic implications of my argument. I delineate a subset of slippery slope arguments against which my objection may be decisive, consider how the proponents of such arguments may evade my objection by adding further premises, and examine the likely plausibility of these additional premises.
Reading list
| Discuss | Edit | Categorize | My bibliography | Export citation | Other links: journals.cambridge.org dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ...
| | Other links: journals.cambridge.org dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Discussion of Justin Oakley & Dean Cocking, Consequentialism, complacency, and slippery slope arguments
 Back
All discussions
Start a new thread
|
There are no threads in this forum |
Nothing in this forum yet.
