Does that banner say 'updates twice a week'? Oh, woops, it's meant to say updates twice a year. What's that? It's been two years since my last post? I... er... *fiddles with neck-tie nervously*.... anyway I'm back now for another post, so all my readers that have been refreshing this page furiously for the past 700 or so days can rejoice!
I'd like to talk about what's known as the "slippery slope" argument. It's something that I see bandied about all the time in politics (at least what The Daily Show shows me of politics), and most recently in the gun-control debate. Placing any regulations on guns, it seems, will put the United States on an inexorable path toward complete banning of all firearms. This is the form the argument generally takes; in the abstract it's like this: while there is nothing wrong with doing X, if you do X you will eventually do X* which is essentially X to a larger degree, which is bad, therefore don't do X. Notice that this is the same as the "gateway drug" argument used to scare teens away from smoking weed (if you smoke weed, you'll eventually shoot-up heroin, so don't smoke weed).
Given the frequency with which this argument is used, I think it's worth considering whether or not this argument is ever a good one. And, if it is a good one in those instances, what are the qualities of those cases that make it a good one? A meta-analytic study by Hall and Lynskey (2005)[1] gives some credence to the "gateway drug" argument. Apparently there are consistent correlations between cannabis use and use of other drugs, with early cannabis use being an even stronger predictor of later use of other drugs. The authors find that this correlation can be explained by three factors: (1) people who start smoking weed are more likely to have traits that predict use of other drugs, (2) the need to buy weed puts one in an environment where other drugs are available, and (3) smoking weed is correlated with being part of a drug sub-culture, which will encourage the person to use other drugs.
So, here we have a perfectly good argument for why you shouldn't smoke weed, even if you think that doing so is perfectly fine in itself. That is, assuming that you think that doing other drugs is bad, and something to be avoided (which I'm not sure that I agree with). Also the argument is entirely contingent on social factors; nowhere is it claimed that those who smoke weed will, qua smoking weed, develop the urge to do other drugs. Rather it just happens that smoking weed is likely to put one in an environment that makes other drugs readily accessible and encourages their use. But this is an important distinction because one's social situation is relatively flexible compared to one's psychological situation. It would be easy enough for a person who wants to smoke weed to avoid socializing with those who want something more; whereas, if smoking weed itself caused the urge to do other drugs, well, this would not be so easily managed.
And here we might distinguish between a 'true' slippery slope argument, and a 'fake' one. I think for a slippery slope argument to be true in needs to be the case that X really does cause one to do X* in the long-run. The gateway drug argument does not satisfy these criteria: we could imagine a world where, holding human psychology constant, weed does not increase likelihood of doing other drugs, in fact it may not be so distant a world at all. All one would need to do is separate smoking weed from the environment and subculture that involves other drugs -- perhaps the same way that alcohol is separate from the drug subculture (and if you need evidence for this, consider how strangely uncomfortable people are when you call alcohol a drug). This is important because if it is possible to separate weed from the environment that leads one to do (what we are assuming are) bad things, and weed is (we assume) good/neutral, then laws or measures that work to limit weed use don't really attack the problem, but only one of it's antecedents, which is not in itself harmful. And I don't see how one could argue here that eliminating the good/neutral things one does that are only contingently associated with the bad could be better than the obvious alternative, which is eliminating the direct causes of the bad things -- i.e. association with the drug subculture, etc.
So I don't consider the gateway drug scenario to be a true slippery slope argument, nor do I see it as a particularly good reason for banning the use of cannabis (any other arguments against it notwithstanding). But the discussion brings out the key factor that defines a true slippery slope argument: X needs to actually cause X*. How I defined 'actually cause' in the case of cannabis use is something like this: in all possible worlds where human psychology is the same as our present world, X significantly increases the chances of doing X*. It's important that human psychology is held constant because we're particularly worried about humans in our example -- that is, we're worried about whether weed increases other drug use for humans and not some however slightly modified version of humans. But the thing we need to hold constant depends on the particular case -- whatever entity is doing X, it is the nature of that entity we need to hold constant. Thus, for the gun-control example mentioned above, we need to hold the 'state psychology' constant. We need to say that, given the current structure of the US government and norms, it is the case that any small regulation on guns will significantly increase the likelihood of greater gun regulation.
It is no doubt the case that laws and norms interact in a complex, and ill-defined way. As such, I think it would be a relatively safe prediction that enacting a law will, over time, cause the development of norms that are congruent with that law. This, for two general reasons: (1) there is, in most subcultures, a norm against breaking any law, and (2) laws make the activity they prohibit less prominent, and also likely associate it with pariah groups that the average person would not want to be connected with. But this prediction is by no means certain, and besides, it only predicts that passing a law will cause a norm associated with following that law, and not anything over and above that law. What the slippery slope argument predicts is something further, that creating a certain law will establish a norm that will give way to even stricter laws of the same nature.
But this is an odd sort of prediction, and one must consider what basis there is for it in general, and then specifically in the gun-control debate. I suppose anti-gun-control advocates are envisioning something like the gradual "brain-washing" of the American people: if they allow enacting law X at this time, then people will become accustomed to law X so that the more egregious X* doesn't seem so bad any more. However, says the anti-gun-control advocate, they are wrong that X* is not bad, it really is bad, but they have simply been brain-washed by law X's persistent presence. I imagine that the advocate has something like the gradual process by which Jews where first stigmatized, then ghettoized, then sent to concentration camps in Nazi Germany in mind. However, this example has a fundamental difference than the slippery slope argument: at no point was it 'okay' to establish systemic inequities for the Jewish people, even in the relatively minor ways that it was done in the beginning (side note: I have only shaky knowledge of the events of the holocaust, this example is meant only to be illustrative and not factual). A true slippery slope argument states that X is good/neutral in itself, but it will lead to X* which is bad.
And here, I think, is the real difficulty with the slippery slope argument: it is only relevant when X is good or neutral. If X itself is bad, then there is no reason to appeal to what X 'might' lead to, because you already have reason not to enact X. But if X is good in itself, then we need to be really sure that X will lead to X* if we are going to, for this reason, prevent it from being enacted. And is there ever really good evidence for this? I question whether allowing a law that restricts certain activity is at all causally connected to allowing stricter laws of the same kind. In fact, those who use this argument are blatantly inconsistent on this point. Legalizing same-sex marriage is a slippery slope toward slackening marriage laws to the point where bestiality is legal; on the other hand, stricter gun-control measures are a slippery slope towards outlawing guns altogether. If we are to take these arguments seriously, then it appears that making a law in any direction (stricter or slacker) begins a slippery slope into whatever terrible extreme the person can imagine. But this makes this argument appropriate for any situation! I don't think the government should build bike lanes. Why? Because this is a slippery slope toward the banishment of all cars from the road. Neither do I think that the government should remove bike lanes that are not being used. Why? Because this is a slippery slope toward taking out bike lanes altogether. Most importantly the argument assumes that those people who enact laws are completely incapable of setting the boundaries in the correct place: set any boundary, and you will be led toward that boundary's worst extreme. But if this is true, then how the hell did we make any laws in the first place? Shouldn't we find ourselves in some sort of bizarre state, where some laws are terribly restrictive, and there is a complete absence of other laws that are very important?
In sum, if you are using a slippery slope argument, it implies to me that you cannot think of an intuitive reason why the thing you are against is bad in itself. But, if there are also reasons why the thing is good (i.e. it's not just neutral) then your slippery slope argument cannot possibly hold weight against these reasons. Having considered it, I really don't see how the argument could ever be anything but an impediment to progress.
[1] Hall, W.D., & Lynskey, M. (2005) Is cannabis a gateway drug? Testing hypotheses about the relationship between cannabis use and the use of other illicit drugs. Drug and Alcohol Review, 24, 39-48
No comments:
Post a Comment