Straw Men, Slippery Slopes & Occam's Razors

Great Debates
1

Only having been a member here for a month or so I have noticed that a few rebuttals to arguments get tossed around quite often. Straw Man! Slippery Slope! Occam’s Razor! But are we using these arguments prudently? I have some problems with the way these arguments are used and I would like to share them:

Straw Man: This seems to be employed far too often. I often see is cited when someone simply has the nerve to challenge someone’s argument. From what I understand a Straw Man argument occurs when someone takes thier opponent’s original arguement, exaggerates it, and then attacks the exaggerated argument without adressing the original argument. I have often seen, however, a person argue the results of a certain position and then be accused of straw making. Or I’ll see a person give a similar (real world) example of a position and also be accused of straw.

Slippery Slope: As I understand it the basis of empirical science is the recognition of repeatable patterns of cause and effect. So why, if I see that (B) has always followed (A) in history, can I not think that it is likely that (B) will follow (A) in the future? When someone does this they are always accused of Slippery Slope. Shouldn’t this term only apply to cases in which we have no evidence (historical or emperical) that the reaction might happen?

Occam’s Razor: This really isn’t a logical fallacy and I think it is not only overly used but it may be wrong at its inception. Who says the simplest explanation is the best? We may wish for things to be simple beacause it makes them eaiser to understand but our wishes don’t reflect reality. Shouldn’t the razor only be used when we have two competing thoeries, neither of which are more plausable than the other, then we use the simplest only beacause it is easier to understand – not beacuse it is more true.

Ok - so am I wrong? Have I misunderstood these arguments? Should this be in the GQ thread? Why do complaints of other logical fallacies never turn up? I’ve never been accused of a fallacy of Misleading Vividness, or an appeal to emotion. Those and many other fallicies seem to be acceptable. Are people just avoiding real communication by throwing up accusations of straw men on slippery slopes holding Occam’s razor?

2

Well, I certainly haven’t seen all the cases you’re talking about, and many of them might be fraudulent, but:

Straw Man: Like I said, I haven’t seen your examples, but if the arguer were to present one possible result of a position, show it is problematic, and then present that as a proof that all possible results of a situation are problematic, that would also be a strawman fallacy; it assumes the additional condition that the selected outcome is the only outcome. This is more bad the less likely the presented bad outcome is.

Slippery Slope: Like the above, there is a potential problem of presenting a possible outcome as a probable or certain outcome. The presentation of “It has happened before” meaning “It will happen this time” is in fact what the fallacy of slippery slope is: cases where there is no evidence in favor of the possibility are not slippery slope fallacies. They are ‘making up things out of nothing’ fallacies.

Occam’s Razor: As you note, Occam’s razor proves nothing --but it’s shorthand for “your notion is so out there that I see no reason whatsoever to give it credence.” Regardless of how the razor is literally defined, I’ve always seen it used as pruning less likely ideas, rather than simpler ideas. We actually accept a lot of complicated things, atomic theory for one, in spite of simpler explainiations. This is due to the fact that those complicated things have proof in their favor.

And, speculating wildly here, there probably aren’t many accusations of Misleading Vividness or appeal to emotion because they’re not as useful. If someone tries to carry off a false argument by an appeal to emotion around here, the response will probably directly dismatle the flaws in the argument without bothering to point out the rhetorical device that was trying to cover up the holes.

3

The issue of slippery slopes is a tricky one… for instance, I’m passionately opposed to censorship of all sorts, not because I believe that every single opinion ever expressed has merit, but because I believe that many opinions do have merit, and one doesn’t know ahead of time which ones they’ll be, so it’s crucially important to allow as many opinions as possible. That is, all opinions.

On the other hand, I think that the argument that gun registration and background checks are the first step towards guns being banned forever is silly.
Like I said, it’s a tricky issue.

4

Another argument I’m sure you’ve seen around here is:

Cite?

Seriously, these problems are much better discussed in the specific rather than the abstract; can you give us linked examples of cases in which you feel any of these terms have been used incorrectly?

I’ll just address Occam’s razor, because I think it’s poorly understood often, and I think you don’t quite understand it. “The simplest explanation is the best explanation” is an incorrect paraphrase of the idea.

Specifically, the idea is that one shouldn’t multiply entities beyond necessities. As I understand this weird phrasing, it means that when you’re looking for an explanation for a phenomenon, you should go with the explanation that requires the least amount of faith.

For example, I observe that when a match is dragged across a rough surface, it bursts into flame. I read about this phenomenon and discover that it’s a chemical reaction brought about by the application of friction to the chemicals in the match-head. I believe this hypothesis because it requires relatively little faith on my part: I believe that the scientists I’m reading have no reason to lie, and my experience with scientists backs this up, and I can observe and smell that there are specific chemicals on the match head, and I know that friction generates heat, and I know that match heads when applied to existing flames ignite very rapidly. There’s not much faith involved here.

Of course, there’s another hypothesis, which is that Haephaestes, the ancient god of the forge, looks kindly on matches and considers the music of their being drawn across rough surfaces to be an homage to him which He rewards with His holy flame. This hypothesis can’t really be disproven, but it requires me to accept many things on faith: that Haephaestes exists, (and that I spelled His name right); that He looks kindly on matches; that He considers their noise to be an homage to Him; and that He rewards the homage with fire.

Applying Occam’s razor to these two hypotheses, I find that the former hypothesis requires fewer assumptions, fewer articles of faith, than the second one; therefore, the first hypothesis is to be preferred.

Interestingly, it’s something of a meta-principle: as near as I know, it can’t be tested, isn’t falsifiable. Instead, it’s a practical working tool for scientists.

Hopefully this explanation both makes sense and is accurate; the example is pretty shoddy work, but it’s the best I can think of off the top of my head.

Daniel

5

Occam’s razor really is just getting rid of the unnecessary terms. It’s comparable to the difference between y = x and y = (5x +7 - 2 -5)/5. Though the two equations are exactly equivalent, it’s pretty obvious why one form would be preferred. Simlairly I could hypothamehcate that the fundamnetal forces were caused by microscopic gnomes. As long as the action of these gnomes showed no theoretically observable difference from current theories then the two models would be exactly equivalent. So far however few have taken up the theory of gnomic forces as the gnomes are an unnecessary term and the same results can be produced without them.

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Is the slippery slope a fallacy? I always regarded it as a rhetorical device that was logically neutral (i.e. it may or may not be legitimate to invoke it depending on the example).

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If I had to a hazard a guess at what prompted this, I’d say it was the post where I accused him of using strawman arguments that was posted about an hour and a half before this thread was opened. :slight_smile: The thread is here. I’ll post excerpts and explain exactly why I think his argument was a strawman. Then y’all will have some examples to work off of.
I had a paragraph that read (warning: relgious discussion. Run away! Run away!):

HumptysHamhole responded with:

I then called his argument a strawman:

I think this is a strawman because he’s attacking an argument that is different then the one I made. I said: “the authors of many canonical books never intended that their work should be taken literally.”

Two important points:
[ol]
[li]“Canonical book” means any book of the bible that isn’t in the Apocrypha, not just the New Testament.[/li][li]Stating that the author’s didn’t intend for their work to be taken literally is not the same thing as stating that the authors didn’t believe in the literal diety or the Resurection of Christ.[/li][/ol]

His response (to that part of my paragraph) was: “Please give us an example in which authors of the New Testament did not believe in the literal deity and resurrection of Christ.” He’s changed the argument from “canonical book” to “New Testament” and he’s changed what was meant to be interpreted literally from the actual piece of literature to the personal beliefs of the author. A textbook strawman, in my opinion.

(He later clarfified that his “European Church leader” from the past bit was in regards to my assertion that fundamentalism was a relatively recent American movement.)

8

Cite!

9

Helpful, thanks! But, boy I have a problem with that explanation.

Look at one of their examples of why the slippery slope is a fallacy:

It’s a straw man! :smiley: You wouldn’t argue x, y, and z “will” happen. What you’d say is that they “could” happen. Which is true. It’s perfectly legitimate to say you shouldn’t gamble because there’s a risk you’ll become addicted, isn’t it? You shouldn’t shoot smack or smoke butts for the same reason.

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I just deleted a post I was going to submit about that site (cite) because it probably belonged it the pit.

11

Actually, it’s a perfect example because they don’t say “could” or “might”. If they did, it wouldn’t be a fallacy. They don’t say there is a risk, the say “you will…”

12

Well, ok then slippery slope then is only a fallacy if it suggests the final outcome is a certainty. Otherwise it’s not a fallacy.

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I’m not fallacy expert, but that seems like a resonable stance. Using a less than certain statment in a slippery slope argument is sort of a slippery slope to almost anything. :slight_smile:

BTW, this site is also good.

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My point is you almost never see someone presenting the slippery slope as a certainty. It’s practically by definition only a risk (it’s a slippery slope, not a bottomless pit).

So, where’s the fallacy?

15

Quite true Meta - I actually began writing this thread just after I read your post. I see you still haven’t resonded to my lastest post in that thread though – nor have you ever presented any arguement supporting your original assertion. Which is one of the reasons I began this thread. It was easier for you to yell Strawman! rather than to support your own original assertions. I actually did mischaracterize your argument before I attacked it but it was for good reason (explained in the post). My mischaracterization of your statement doesen’t make your statement any more valid. This is what I mean by a failure to communicate – I still don’t know what you were trying to argue in the other thread because instead of clarifying your position you simply called me on a straw argument and left it at that. As for the merits of my arguments in the other thread – I think the others Dopers can decide for themselves.

16

uglybeech, welcome! Love the name!

I am in total agreement that the term slippery slope impllies risk, not certainty. The fallacy lies in believing that we are born on anything other than a slippery slope and that socio-political viewpoints in opposition to our own are held by anyone other than cowardly chicken shits.

17

this thread seems familiar…

this is the alpha dog of fallacy sites

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this thread seems familiar…

this is the alpha dog of fallacy sites

19

Why not? Compare it to, say, the basis of angular momentum: Space doesn’t have a preferred direction…yadda, yadda…hence angular momentum. Doesn’t sound too far off from Aristotle asserting that circular motion is most perfect, hence circular orbits. cite

Yet, even such abstract metaphysicals are testable inasmuchas the former jibes with what we’ve discovered much more than the latter.

So consider Occam’s Razor. Which theories generally jibe w/ what we discover, those with unexplained processes or those without? If you watch gasoline prices in your city you can come up with two obvious conclusions: there is a lot of collusion going on, or the retail markets are economically competitive. The second conclusion is more parsimonious because you are now not left with a massive consipracy to explain.

It’s my understanding that the history of science is chock full of examples of where parsimony in explanation ended up being correct. (No specific cites.) I recall one video of a shrink who had to deal with a self-abuser. This poor guy had beaten himself so badly that he had permanently disfigured his face. You could hypothesize about his Id, or about his childhood, or about his wiring; alternatively, you could hypothesise operant conditioning as the cause. It is certainly the simplest: He wants attention, he randomly hits himself one day, he gets attention, the process snowballs. Using that hypothesis, the shrink solved this poor man’s problem in about a day.

Suppose instead you had someone who was hallucinating. Again, operant conditioning would be a very parsimonious explanation; however, it would fail to explain all the observed facts, namely the fact that the hallucinations stop with medication.

I will grant the idea that testing Occam’s Razor in a laboratory may be nigh impossible. Maybe. But, and I wish I had specific cites for this (for my own benefit at the very least), it seems that it’s success generating more correct theories would move it from the realm of metaphysical to that of empirically verified.

(Is metaphysical the right word?)

20

I tend to use these terms more as rough-and-ready debating tools than logic tools.

That is, to me a strawman is an argument you’ve made up on behalf of an opponent that’s ridiculously flimsy, so that you may convincingly demolish it, replacing his or her real argument with the demolished argument in lurkers’ minds. A sleight of mind, if you will.

The slippery slope is more a reference to the fact that history has shown that some social experiments tend to be very hard to reverse once started – a slippery slope that you can slide down easily but can’t scramble back up very easily. Frex, censorship is almost always cited in terms of the most vile, awful products available, but rapidly spreads to include all media and many things that are only mildly offensive by most standards. It’s a slippery slope because the people who crave censorship ultimately want to control what other peole can think, so they need more and more ofi it. It’s a social phenom, not a logical one. Same with gun registration. The people who want guns registered really don’t want most folks owning guns.

Occam’s Razor is more of a matter of logic than the others. It simply means that if you have two competing theories to explain a phenomenon, the simpler theory is the one to go with all other things being equal. In many instances, of course (atomic theory, for example) all other things are not equal. Typically, claims which require the adoption of entire religious mythologies to make sense are not simple. And prolonged debate over time has tended to debunk religious claims, not support them, so there’s a historical element to be dealt with, too.