Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

[Ken Armstrong <armstron AT ohiou.edu>]

At 09:28 PM 9/21/2003 -0500, you wrote:

>  Some may say that I'm presenting a slippery slope argument, but just
> because an argument is fallacious, doesn't mean that it is untrue. For
> example, some argued (fallaciously) that if we permit a woman to abort her
> child (due to incest or rape), we open the door for abortion as a way of
> birth control (and that is what happened--last I heard was that 96% of
> abortions had nothing to do with incest or rape).

 David,

 Though I get farther and farther away from my grad school philosophy 
minor, I'm sure hoping that if an argument (not it's conclusion) is 
fallacious, it is not "true."  Off the top  of my head, I can't speak to 
the example you give because I don't know what made the original argument 
fallacious. But it seems to me that if the argument is faulty (any 
argument), it is not a good argument. It doesn't stand. Period. If the 
conclusion, illogic of the argument notwithstanding,  is true, it is true 
because it is the legitimate conclusion to a different, if unstated, good 
argument. Emotionally charged issues, I think, attract bad arguments. Which 
is not to imply anything except the necessity for caution in analyzing 
them, as ends never justify means, etc.

 Ken A