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Comment by perching_aix

4 days ago

> It's possible in some cases that the conclusion is weak

Not only weak, but completely void, which is why it is an informal fallacy, and thus a fallacy, if I understand it right. You're correct that it's not a logical fallacy specifically, and I do see in retrospect that that was the point of contention (in literal terms anyways). But I'm really not sure that it really was in literal terms you guys were talking, really didn't seem like it.

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perching_aix

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AnthonyMouse  4 days ago

> Not only weak, but completely void, which is why it is an informal fallacy, and thus a fallacy

In those cases the premises wouldn't even be satisfied. It's like saying that "all men are mortal, Socrates is a man, therefore Socrates is mortal" is a fallacy because you're disputing that Socrates is a man rather than a fictional character in Plato's writings. That doesn't make the argument a fallacy, it makes the premise in dispute and therefore the argument potentially inapplicable, which is not the same thing.

In particular, it requires you to dispute the premise rather than the form of the argument.

  • perching_aix  4 days ago

    You'll need to take this up with the entire field of philosophy, because in literature informal fallacies are absolutely an existing and distinct class of fallacies, with the slippery slope argument being cited among them: https://iep.utm.edu/fallacy/#H2

    It's not just a Wikipedia thing or me wordsmithing it into existence. As far as I'm concerned though, arguments the premises of which are not reasonable to think they apply / are complete, or are not meaningfully possible to evaluate, are decidedly fallacious - even if they're logically sound.