Slippery Slope Arguments

Will Truman recently argued that slippery slope arguments have a worse reputation than they deserve; and Tod Kelly argued in response that they are in fact quite bad. Kelly's reasons for thinking them awful:

(1) SSAs are largely dishonest and lazy attempts to “magic” away strong arguments against one’s position.
(2) SSAs aren’t really tools for convincing people who disagree with you that you’re correct; they’re simply a way to preach to your own choir — while potentially shrinking it.
(3) SSAs assume a wholly static world where one does not exist.
(4) SSAs are entirely indiscriminate.

I think Kelly's argument actually shows something rather different than he thinks -- namely, that standard responses to even very poor slippery slope arguments are very poor as responses to those kinds of arguments. Part of this is that there is always a bit of a muddle about what a slippery slope argument is. There are at least three different kinds of arguments that get called slippery slope arguments:

(A) Causal extrapolations: These are what the phrase 'slippery slope' often seems to suggests to people's minds. This kind of argument is basically a causal prediction; 'if you keep doing this, you're heading to such-and-such bad consequence'.

(B) Motivational extrapolations: These are the camel's nose or thin-end-of-the-wedge arguments. They could all be summarized by the saying, 'If you give them an inch, they'll take an ell'. Unlike (1), these are estimations of political strategy, not tendencies to effects. The 'Overton Windows Move' mentioned by Truman is a good example of this kind of argument.

(C) Identifications of justificatory imprecision: These are about principles or precedents and conclusions that can be drawn given them; given such-and-such principle or precedent, there doesn't seem to be anything that prevents one from also concluding that such-and-such bad thing is good for the same reason.

There are broad features in common among the three kinds -- they all are directional, they all identify a limit that is designated as bad and thus to be avoided, and so forth -- but they are very different kinds of arguments. And it's very easy to see that Kelly's (3) is utterly irrelevant to (C)-SSAs, for instance.

Another thing that I think muddles the ground is the notion that slippery slope arguments are put forward as proofs. This is explicitly assumed by Kelly:

There is literally no position, no matter how innocuous or righteous, that a SSA can’t “prove” will lead to the end of civilization as we know it. That right there should give you some pause about its inherent worth as a tool of discourse.

But it seems very doubtful that SSAs are ever put forward as proofs. Rather, as I have argued before, they are challenges. The point is not to establish that the bad thing will happen -- (A)-SSAs and at least some (B)-SSAs are about present dispositions, not the future, and (C)-SSAs are about rational consistency, i.e., rational consequences and not causal consequences. The point is to raise the question of whether an opposing position is properly thought out in the first place.

Kelly's objection (1) actually draws on this aspect of SSAs, I think, since argumentative challenges are relatively easy to raise in comparison with a lot of other arguments, so machine-gunning challenges at a position is a relatively cheap way to argue, since a person of even mediocre ingenuity can often come up with challenges in a shorter period of time than it takes even a genius to answer them properly. Lazy reasoners do, in fact, tend to fall back on argumentative challenges. But this is a very different thing, of course, from holding that the challenges don't need to be met. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but the cheap cost of the argument doesn't tell us anything about that. It also doesn't tell us anything about whether a given situation is one in which an argumentative challenge is perfectly justified.

And when we recognize them to be challenges, we see immediately that many of the purported problems evaporate: Kelly's (3) is simply false of SSAs taken as challenges (I think (3) makes the error of confusing causal tendency with causal result, as well, but even if this is not so, it fails to be a correct characterization of something put forward as a challenge), and his (2) is simply irrelevant (since whether a challenge is justified is not dependent on whether the challenged takes it seriously). His (1) and (4), which are the strongest objections if we treat SSAs as purported proofs, run into obvious problems if we are taking SSAs as challenges. It doesn't matter how strong you think the arguments for trying for A are; if you can't rule out that A makes bad B easier, that weakens your overall argument for trying for A. Practical arguments are not hermetically sealed; I may have a good argument for A, but I can at the same time have a good argument for avoiding A -- and what matters for practical reasoning is the overall disposition of all the arguments. You might have a crowd of good arguments that X would be good to have; but you might just have one deal-breaking argument that gives you sufficient reason to avoid X, however good it might be in other ways, because it shows that you don't actually have a way to get X without unacceptable losses or compromises or commitments.

And (4) likewise runs into problems. Obviously the general structure of an argumentative challenge is going to be indiscriminate. Argumentative challenges raise the question of whether rational standards have been properly met, and every practical policy or plan is going to have to meet rational standards if it is to be a rational policy or plan. That challenges could be raised will be taken for granted by any rational and reasonable person; precisely what makes rational and reasonable people rational and reasonable is that they work to have answers to argumentative challenges rather than just assuming that their claims are reasonable. If someone gives an argumentative challenge, there are only two possible adequate rational answers to it:

(a) We have reason to think the challenge doesn't need to be bothered with (e.g., because the purported bad consequence is not bad at all, or because the challenge is logically incoherent)
(b) We have reason to think the challenge can be met.

It's irrelevant that one can challenge everything indiscriminately; what matters is whether the challenge can in principle be answered. Merely assuming that the challenge doesn't need to be bothered with, or that it can be met, is a sign of stupidity. If, to take an example of Kelly's, you are arguing for same-sex marriage and you really cannot show, even when challenged, that the reasons you are giving for same-sex marriage do not also support the bad consequence of marriage to turtles, which you reject vehemently, you are not very bright, and have no reason to regard yourself as in any way reasonable and rational in your support for same-sex marriage; and you should possibly leave the defense of your position to people who are less stupid than you are. We are not talking a high intellectual bar here; it's literally one of the most elementary rational standards: try to reason things through in a principled rather than merely ad hoc way. If your best response to a challenge claiming that you haven't thought through your argument to the end is to say, "Why would one even think beyond this point?", it is you, not the challenge, that is the problem.

Thus Kelly's conclusion fails:

After all, there’s a word for an argument that requires no effort, little reasoning, has little if any expectation of being persuasive, and is equally good for all positions.

That word is “useless.”

This is not true if the argument in question is a challenge rather than a proof. One could very well have a perfectly rational and correct challenge that is easy to make, is unlikely to persuade the person who is challenged, and could be applied to every position -- to take the clearest and most obvious example, if your argument is holding up a basic rational standard and the person being challenged is being irrational. The existence of irrational people exempting themselves from basic rational standards does not make rational argument useless; they make it all the more necessary.(There's an irony, incidentally, and perhaps a bit of deliberate funning, in the fact that Kelly's objection (4) against slippery slope arguments is quite obviously a slippery slope argument.)

None of this is to say, of course, that all SSAs are good challenges. It's sometimes very difficult to make good challenges to arguments and positions. It is sometimes said of free verse or the fantasy genre that they are full of bad writing precisely because they are easy to write but hard to write well; and argumentative challenges are certainly easy to formulate but often difficult to formulate properly. But I think Tod Kelly's argument against SSAs captures the features of most common response to slippery slope arguments. Which is why I said that I think Kelly has really shown that standard responses to even very poor slippery slope arguments are very poor as responses to those kinds of arguments.

Mnemonic Poetry

A mnemonic poem from H. Holman and M. C. W. Irvine, Questions on Logic (1897):

Of terms have but three; proposition as term;
Distribute the Middle--in this be most firm;
Distribute no term in Conclusion, beside,
Unless in a premise 'tis equally wide;
One premise affirmative, this you must learn,
For negative premises nothing affirm;
A negative head has a negative tail,
And the converse of this is of equal avail.

I found it quoted in Peter Coffey, The Science of Logic (1912). The standard rules of syllogism that the mnemonic summarizes are as follows, with the line to which the rule corresponds:

(1) A syllogism must contain three, and only three, terms. (line 1a)
(2) A syllogism must contain three, and only three, propositions. (line 1b)
(3) The middle term must be distributed at least once in the premises. (line 2)
(4) No term may be distributed in the conclusion that is not distributed in the premises. (lines 3-4)
(5) At least one premise must be affirmative. (lines 5-6)
(6) A negative premise requires a negative conclusion and vice versa. (lines 7-8)

Mnemonic poetry is an art that should really be more widely cultivated, I think. The goal is to get a poem that flows well as a poem (thus making it easy to memorize, since many poetic devices are mnemonic devices as well, and not by accident) but which concisely captures what is to be memorized with as little padding as possible. The poem above does fairly well -- here's the poem with the padding struck out:

Of terms have but three; proposition as term;
Distribute the Middle--in this be most firm;
Distribute no term in Conclusion, beside,
Unless in a premise 'tis equally wide;
One premise affirmative, this you must learn,
For negative premises nothing affirm;
A negative head has a negative tail,
And the converse of this is of equal avail.

One can perhaps argue both sides of whether "of this is equal avail" is padding, and likewise with the sixth line. After a poem with no padding, the best is a poem in which the padding only goes to what is required for the mnemonic, and this is true for this example, in which the padding contributes to the meter and rhyme, which are the poetic features that make it mnemonic.

The Fellowship of Books

Good Books
by Edgar Guest

Good books are friendly things to own.
If you are busy they will wait.
They will not call you on the phone
Or wake you if the hour is late.
They stand together row by row,
Upon the low shelf or the high.
But if you're lonesome this you know:
You have a friend or two nearby.

The fellowship of books is real.
They're never noisy when you're still.
They won't disturb you at your meal.
They'll comfort you when you are ill.
The lonesome hours they'll always share.
When slighted they will not complain.
And though for them you've ceased to care
Your constant friends they'll still remain.

Good books your faults will never see
Or tell about them round the town.
If you would have their company
You merely have to take them down.
They'll help you pass the time away,
They'll counsel give if that you need.
He has true friends for night and day
Who has a few good books to read.

Chrysorrhoas

Today is the feast of St. John of Damascus, Doctor of the Church. From Part III of his Treatise on Holy Images:

I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honouring that matter which works my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God. How could God be born out of lifeless things? And if God’s body is God by union (καθ’ ὑπόστασιν), it is immutable. The nature of God remains the same as before, the flesh created in time is quickened by a logical and reasoning soul. I honour all matter besides, and venerate it. Through it, filled, as it were, with a divine power and grace, my salvation has come to me. Was not the thrice happy and thrice blessed wood of the Cross matter? Was not the sacred and holy mountain of Calvary matter? What of the life-giving rock, the Holy Sepulchre, the source of our resurrection: was it not matter? Is not the most holy book of the Gospels matter? Is not the blessed table matter which gives us the Bread of Life? Are not the gold and silver matter, out of which crosses and altar-plate and chalices are made? And before all these things, is not the body and blood of our Lord matter?

Metany

'Metany' is a word that I had literally never seen before today. It derives from the Greek word 'metanoia' (repentance), and is a variant of 'metania'. A full prostration would be something like kneeling with one's forehead touching the floor, or close to doing so; a metany is a substitute for this, a lesser prostration in which one simply bends at the waist to touch the floor with one hand, or at least come close to it. It's a ritual gesture found in some Eastern churches, sometimes as a requirement and sometimes as a substitute for people who cannot do a full prostration when such things are required. Like any other prostration it is a gesture of humility.

So now you know, and can go forth and impress people whenever the topic comes up in casual conversation....

Ticking Time-Bomb

Suppose an occasion to arise, in which a suspicion is entertained, as strong as that which would be received as a sufficient ground for arrest and commitment as for felony — a suspicion that at this very time a considerable number of individuals are actually suffering, by illegal violence inflictions equal in intensity to those which if inflicted by the hand of justice, would universally be spoken of under the name of torture. For the purpose of rescuing from torture these hundred innocents, should any scruple be made of applying equal or superior torture, to extract the requisite information from the mouth of one criminal, who having it in his power to make known the place where at this time the enormity was practicing or about to be practiced, should refuse to do so? To say nothing of wisdom, Could any pretence be made so much as to the praise of blind and vulgar humanity, by the man who to save one criminal, should determine to abandon a hundred innocent persons to the same fate?

[from Jeremy Bentham, "Means of extraction for extraordinary occasions" (1804) UC 74b/428–30.]

Bentham, because of the above passage, is generally regarded as the originator of what is usually called the 'ticking time-bomb' justification of the use of torture in interrogation. (It's one of many reasons to dislike the influence of Bentham on ethics, I think, but not at all the least.) Jeremy Davies has a very good discussion of Bentham's views on torture in The Fire-Raisers: Bentham and Torture.

Fault-Finders

A Toast to the Men
by Edgar Albert Guest

Here's to the men! Since Adam's time
They've always been the same;
Whenever anything goes wrong,
The woman is to blame.
From early morn to late at night,
The men fault-finders are;
They blame us if they oversleep,
Or if they miss a car.
They blame us if, beneath the bed,
Their collar buttons roll;
They blame us if the fire is out
Or if there is no coal.
They blame us if they cut themselves
While shaving, and they swear
That we're to blame if they decide
To go upon a tear.

Here's to the men, the perfect men!
Who never are at fault;
They blame us if they chance to get
The pepper for the salt.
They blame us if their business fails,
Or back a losing horse;
And when it rains on holidays
The fault is ours, of course.
They blame us when they fall in love,
And when they married get;
Likewise they blame us when they're sick,
And when they fall in debt.
For everything that crisscross goes
They say we are to blame;
But, after all, here's to the men,
We love them just the same!

How Do You Know What Your Intuitions Are?

As I've noted before, certain strains of analytic philosophy are in the habit of trying to explain the better known by the lesser known -- things get explained in terms of propositions, justification, etc., that themselves have highly controvertible accounts. One of the terms that often comes up is 'intuitions'. It's actually quite recent; the popularity is usually ascribed to the influence of Chomsky's talk of 'linguistic intuitions'. But Chomsky had something very specific in mind, with an account of how linguistic intuitions worked and why we should take them seriously; in the spread of the term to other fields, it hasn't always been the case that people have been as careful as Chomsky. And the inevitable result is that there are a lot of different ideas of what intuitions are, and with rather different accounts that would seem to suggest that they have to work very differently. It's not my interest here to look at this disagreement more closely, but to raise a very different issue that seems to apply across the board.

On one family of accounts, intuitions are suspicions, opinions, judgments, or beliefs. On another, they are predispositions, tendencies making claims attractive to us, or the like. On another, they are appearances or perhaps rather the cognitive state of a subject when something appears to him or her -- in short, kinds of consciousness or perceptions. Take any or all of these. The question I think should be raised is: "How do we know what the content of our intuition is?"

This is not, in itself, a skeptical question. But recognizing that something is what one is actually intuiting is distinct from simply intuiting it, in the same sense that recognizing that you are seeing such-and-such is different from seeing it, or that recognizing that you are hearing Chopin is different from hearing it. While what one intuits need not be oneself, recognizing that you are intuiting something (and thus that it is what you are intuiting) is a matter of self-knowledge. There are even more accounts of what self-knowledge is than there are of what intuition is, although not all of them need be mutually exclusive, since there are a number of reasons to think that self-knowledge is a rather large genus rather than an infima species. (I have in fact elsewhere suggested that this seems to be the case for what analytic philosophers call 'intuitions', as well -- that is, that there are actually lots of very different things that work very differently that get placed into the one box.) But we don't have to get into any of that; we simply wish to raise a few questions in light of it. Three immediately come to mind.

(1) Is it possible to intuit something and not recognize that you are intuiting it? There seems some reason for thinking so. For instance, one might think that we are constantly intuiting things but that we often don't recognize that we are doing so unless we stop to reflect or introspect on what we are doing. After all, we don't spend our lives going around identifying this as an intuition, that as an intuition; we just go about our lives, and occasionally think about intuitions as such.

(2) Is it possible to think you are intuiting something and not actually be intuiting anything? Can the appearance of intuitiveness be mimicked by something else? Is it sometimes the case that what we think we intuit we are actually imposing on ourselves (perhaps under social pressure, or distraction, or hastiness, or some such) rather than really intuiting? For instance, at least some of the intuition pumps in Dennett's "Quining Qualia" could be adapted to suggest this possibility for intuitions.

(3) Is it possible to think you are intuiting something and be wrong about what you are actually intuiting? Here is one possible reason to think so: philosophers appealing to intuitions sometimes seem to suggest that what they are doing is making obscure intuitions more clear. But if intuitions can be obscure, or need to be made more clear, it seems that there is a possibility of jumping to conclusions about what they are before you've actually done the work of making them more clear. And that seems to suggest that you can think you are intuiting something and not be right about what it is.

In each case, the interesting thing is less whether one answers Yes or No than what one's reasons are and what those reasons imply about how one should proceed in appealing to intuitions. Whatever intuition might be, appealing to intuitions is a complex process: it requires intuiting, recognizing that you are intuiting and what you are intuiting, and making use of that recognition. Your account of intuitions does not automatically answer how you recognize the fact that X is what you are intuiting. Is our recognition here simply transparent and certain? Do we need to take steps to make sure that we are doing it correctly, and if so, what would they be? If we take a dispositional account of intuitions, recognizing your own dispositions is not always a simple or easy process. If we take intuitions to be more like beliefs, people do at least claim that such-and-such, although they thought they believed it at the time, was not what they really believed; what is more, people do seem at times to make false inferences about their own beliefs, by not thinking through those inferences properly. If intuitions are more like a kind of consciousness or perception, illusions are quite common for other kinds of consciousness or perception. Regardless of one's account of intuitions, there seems to be a gap here of some significance that needs an explicit bridge.

"Ironic"

I found this rather funny:



I remember when the original song came out just over twenty years ago. Actually, a lot of songs I remember coming out came out about twenty years ago; that probably says something about me.

Ought Not, Therefore Doesn't

Something I have been thinking about, without much commitment on the matter. One of the peculiarities of atheistic arguments from evil is that they are by nature arguments that something does not exist because it morally ought not to exist, or can always be translated into forms in which they appear to make this kind of inference. This is not always explicitly brought out, but it's at least very difficult to find an argument that is not at least implicitly committed to a claim like "To be morally perfect, one ought not tolerate the existence of any evil" or "Completely good people ought to prevent any evils they can" or something similar, and in such a way that this does significant work for the argument. In an atheistic argument from evil, it is always the premise that God is wholly good, or morally perfect, or omnibenevolent, or what have you that does the primary work of generating an inconsistency or improbability given the existence of evil. And if you weaken the ought-claim in virtually any way (e.g., "To be morally perfect, one ought not tolerate evil unless one has a really, really, really, really good reason") it always causes serious problems for the argument. Thus the point that arguments from evil can generally be taken to conclude that something (e.g., morally perfect being tolerating evil) does not exist (perhaps even cannot exist) because it ought not to exist.

Likewise, it's very difficult to find any close analogues to this -- that is, it's difficult to find any commonly used arguments that have a similar structure, with a focus on what morally ought not to be the case. This is not to say that there are no arguments that move from some kind of 'ought not' or 'should not' to 'does not'; these are actually quite common, and tell us quite a bit about what we usually mean by 'ought' or 'should'. For instance, if I know how a machine is designed and how it was put together, I might rule out the possibility of some particular error happening because, given what I know, it shouldn't happen. Likewise, I might say that a physical theory says X ought not to happen, and conclude that therefore X does not happen. As I've noted before, 'oughts' tend to indicate what is necessary to have solutions to particular kinds of problems or answers to particular kinds of questions; this is at least part of what 'should' covers, as well, although we often also seem to take 'should' to cover any kind of expectation. Either way, they concern what should be taken as given for a problem or question, often (although not always) conditional on other things.

What seems rare, however, is for us ever to do this in moral situations. Perhaps examples might be found in dealing with moral heroes of various kinds, in which we would be inclined to dismiss that something was done because it would be an immoral thing to do? But I cannot think of any real-life examples, and looking in promising places has turned up nothing. The usual way it works in arguments from evil is we start with a claim or assumption that Any A ought to do B; then conclude that Any A does B; and then add (for some particular topic) Not-B and conclude Not-A (for that particular topic). A designation like 'morally perfect' is taken to imply that what ought to be done is done, at least when it applies. But these will all be limit cases, which we don't usually meet in real life. That would explain the rareness. And it makes at least preliminary sense that you would need something like a limit case -- deontic necessities don't usually imply anything about existence or nonexistence, so to get that you would need (1) an unusually strong deontic necessity or (2) another strong modality to 'mix' with the deontic necessity. Atheistic arguments from evil, while sometimes not very explicit about it, tend to use the latter approach, drawing on the metaphysical or alethic necessity of divine attributes.

Fall Still Fighting

See It Through
by Edgar Albert Guest

When you're up against a trouble,
Meet it squarely, face to face;
Lift your chin and set your shoulders,
Plant your feet and take a brace.
When it's vain to try to dodge it,
Do the best that you can do;
You may fail, but you may conquer,
See it through!

Black may be the clouds about you
And your future may seem grim,
But don't let your nerve desert you;
Keep yourself in fighting trim.
If the worst is bound to happen,
Spite of all that you can do,
Running from it will not save you,
See it through!

Even hope may seem but futile,
When with troubles you're beset,
But remember you are facing
Just what other men have met.
You may fail, but fall still fighting;
Don't give up, whate'er you do;
Eyes front, head high to the finish.
See it through!

Fortnightly Book, November 29

The world is quiet here.

Enbrethiliel picked the Fortnightly Book for this time around, and it is Lemony Snicket's The Bad Beginning. Lemony Snicket is the pen-name of Daniel Handler (who often calls himself 'Lemony Snicket's handler'). I will actually be re-reading the entire children's series, the thirteen books of A Series of Unfortunate Events, but I will focus particularly on how it starts.

The books in the series have a number of shared gimmicks. There is always a letter (often on the back cover) from Lemony Snicket to the reader, giving reasons why they should not read such an unpleasant book. Thus The Bad Beginning warns us:

In this short book alone, the three youngster encounter a greedy and repulsive villain, itchy clothing, a disastrous fire, a plot to steal their fortune, and cold porridge for breakfast.

(Incongruous lists is a Snicket staple.) Each book has a melancholy dedication to Beatrice. That of The Bad Beginning is:

To Beatrice---
darling, dearest, dead.

The works end with a letter to Snicket's editor, which typically includes some entirely fantastic plan for getting further manuscripts, and proof of Snicket's story, into the editor's hands. Each book is filled with acronyms, anagrams, cryptic messages, and literary allusions.

And, of course, the works are entirely about an endless series of disasters that strike the three Baudelaire children, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny, beginning with the death of their parents and the villainy of Count Olaf, which they somehow manage to overcome. But much of the strength of the overall story arc, I think, lies in the negative space, the constant hints of the disasters that preceded the Baudelaire children, which only ever come partially into view -- the death of Beatrice, Lemony's cryptic comments about his own misfortunes, the furor and fury over Esmé Squalor's sugar bowl, the VFD, and the like. For it is not an accident that the Baudelaire children suffer so much. They have, through no fault of their own, entered a long, grueling, perplexing war, between those who fight fires (literally and figuratively) and those who start them, between those who value reading books and those who value burning them....

Maronite Year V

The First Sunday of Announcement was about the angel announcing the Forerunner of Christ to Zechariah his father; the Second Sunday of Announcement was about the angel announcing the Christ to Mary; the Third Sunday of Announcement is about the Forerunner and Elizabeth his mother announcing the Christ to Mary.

Sunday of the Visitation of the Virgin to Elizabeth
Ephesians 1:1-14; Luke 1:39-45

A new covenant the Lord has promised;
He will write it in our hearts,
setting His holy seal upon our minds
that we may be His people.
Least and greatest, they will know the Lord's ways.
He will pardon wickedness
and will no longer remember our sins.

Mary like the Ark of the Covenant
came to stay with her cousin.
At her greeting, the Forerunner leapt up,
the prophet in the womb danced.
Like David before the Ark he rejoiced,
in his first prophetic sign
although still dwelling in Elizabeth.

Mary like the Ark of the Covenant
came to stay with her cousin
and Elizabeth spoke with prophecy:
"How can the Ark come to me?
I am visited by my Lord's mother!
Blessed among women are you,
and blessed is the holy fruit of your womb!"

The Word now dwells within you, O Mary!
"My soul magnifies the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God who saves,
who has graced His handmaiden;
Now all generations will call me blessed
because of the Holy One,
who has wrought wonders for a lowly maid.

"He has mercy on those who fear His name;
He does great deeds with His strength.
He overturns the mighty from their seats;
He exalts the lowly ones.
The hungry He has given food to eat,
the wealthy He makes bankrupt.
He remembers promises He has made!"

A new covenant the Lord has promised.
God has chosen us in Christ.
He has adopted us as his children.
Through his blood we are redeemed.
In Him we have forgiveness of our sins.
Those who hear His word of truth
are sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.