The slippery slope was a bit confusing for me to understand as I was reading the description of it in the Epstein text. It is defined as a "chain with conditionals where at least one of them is false or dubious." I am pretty sure that practicing on identifying any slippery slope fallacies in an argument will help me understand and notice these fallacies better. Yet, it is difficult for me at times to determine whether the conditional is really false or dubious because there are conditionals that sound so convincing to me that I cannot be too sure to mark it as a slippery slope fallacy.
As I researched online to find more in depth information about a slippery slope fallacy, I learned that it is an illegitimate use of the "If...then" claim because it causes people to think "that one thing must lead to another." In reality, this is not necessarily true.
For example:
If Macy takes one puff of a lit up cigarette, then she will become addicted to smoking.
Just because Macy takes one puff of a burning cigarette, it does not mean that she will get addicted to smoking. That one puff could cause her to detest smoking and to never try it again.
I also found a very helpful tip: "Check your argument for chains of consequences, where you say "if A, then B, and if B, then C," and so forth. Make sure these chains are reasonable." This tip reminded me of the Check process of a math problem after I completed it in order to make sure that the answer I got was actually correct. This tip is a great tool on justifying whether an argument can be plausible or if it has fallen under a slippery slope.
http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/slippery-slope/
http://www.unc.edu/depts/wcweb/handouts/fallacies.html
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