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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2010
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.
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