Review of Douglas Walton's Slippery Slope Arguments
Lorenzo Peña
The book's main contention is that, far from being necessarily fallacious, very often slippery slope arguments are acceptable, if weak, arguments in a discussion. What alone is fallacious is wording them as if they were conclusive, non-defeasible or deductively valid reasonings closing the discussion.

Despite its merits, I am afraid the book leaves us with a deficient understanding of the logic of such arguments and with no practical proposal for solving at least a broad range of such cases.

In particular, Walton does not cope with gradualism as a plausible ontological alternative. He tries to implement a merely pragmatic approach to the treatment of slippery slope arguments. But a good account of such arguments cannot be only pragmatic -- a logical assessment of the validity of the arguments is also called for. On the other hand, a satisfactory pragmatic approach has to explain that vagueness is a matter of use, not of meaning.

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