Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T23:25:46.752Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Topology in Informal Logic: Slippery Slopes and Black Holes*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Norman Swartz
Norman Swartz
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The commonalities of Douglas Walton's Slippery Slope Arguments and James Davies's Ways of Thinking are obvious: both are written by Canadian philosophers; both lie within the broad field of informal logic; and both make appeals in support of dialogical reasoning. But there the similarities end. The former is the work of a prolific author writing a treatise focussing narrowly on one topic within informal logic; the latter is the product of a newcomer to book-writing, and his is a textbook intended for beginning students.

Type
Critical Notices/Études critiques
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , Fall 1995 , pp. 797 - 806
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

1 It would also have profited from a copy editor who was sensitive to misplaced modifiers. For example: “This technique developed into the technique used by Socrates in the early dialogues called the elenchus” (p. 23). And: “in an everyday discussion of a controversial topic like drug abuse by nonexperts” (p. 78).

2 Swartz, Norman, “A Guide for the Disputatious,” Dialogue, 30, 1–2 (1991): 123–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Walton, Douglas, Informal Logic: A Handbook for Critical Argumentation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).Google Scholar

4 Walton points out that some informal logic texts treat the slippery slope argument exclusively as a fallacy. But then, true to his style, he repeats the point time and again (e.g., on pp. 2, 13, 15, 29, 103, 207, 242, 280, etc.).

5 For the latter, “issues-focussed” approach to slippery slope arguments, see Lamb's, DavidDown the Slippery Slope: Arguing in Applied Ethics (London: Croom Helm, 1988).Google Scholar Walton's and Lamb's books are remarkable complements of one another.

6 Popper, Karl, Conjectures and Refutations (New York: Basic Books, 1962), p. 35, italics added.Google Scholar