Free Making the Connection: Strategies to Build Effective Personal Relationships (Collection) by Richard Templar, Jonathan Herring, Sandy Allgeier, Samuel Barondes Page A

held by disreputable people. For example:
“You don’t want to be vegetarian. Hitler was one of them.”
    Here you’re suggesting that supporters of vegetarianism are associated with Hitler. Of course, that’s completely unfair. Wicked people just occasionally have non-offensive views. It’s really quite difficult to be wrong all of the time about everything!
    Sometimes “hostile association” is more subtle and relies on a hearer’s prejudice:
“A right-wing think tank has suggested lowering taxes, but ...”
    Such a speaker is relying on you immediately dismissing any idea that has come from a right-wing think tank. Similarly if, let’s say, the accounting department in your firm is particularly unpopular you could argue:
“Now, this proposal is very popular with the accounting department, but ...”
    “Begging the question”
    “Ah, but you’re begging the question,” people often complain. The term “begging the question” (officially known as petitio principii ) is commonly used, but not always properly. It is correctly used where a person puts forward an argument that is in fact no more than a reworking of their conclusion. So, rather than relying on a premise to argue to a conclusion, they use a conclusion to argue a reworded conclusion.
“Abortion is murder because it involves the killing of an innocent child.”
    Well, “the killing of an innocent child” is murder and so in effect all that is being done here is to restate the conclusion, but create the impression that an argument has been used. You can normally spot such an argument if you think, “Well, anyone who believed your first point would agree with the second.”
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Getting it wrong
“This deal will make an excellent profit. We will therefore quickly recoup our losses. Those who think the deal involves taking on dangerous debts are therefore mistaken.”
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    In that argument the conclusion that there are no dangers with the deal is only true if it’s true that the deal will makean excellent profit. You can often spot a begging-the-question argument because it’s one that no one could disagree with, if only the fact it started with is correct.
    Slippery slopes
    This is a common device that arises in arguments. It centers on the issue: where do we draw the line? Consider, for example, an argument about whether insurance companies should deny treatment to those who have diseases caused by smoking. An opponent may argue:
“Where next? Will we deny treatment to those who are overweight, to those who do not exercise enough? You will end up with insurance companies only offering treatment to superfit, ultra-virtuous athletes.”
    In a “slippery-slope” argument, the arguer seeks to show that there is no logical place to draw the dividing line, that once one exception is accepted then a line cannot be drawn anywhere sensibly. You’re therefore driven to accepting an absurd conclusion. Because you don’t want to reach the absurd conclusion you decide it would be better not to take even one step down the slippery slope. For example, schools and colleges often have absolute policies on matters such as uniforms, for fear that once one exception is granted there will be a flood of requests for more exceptions.
    In a slippery-slope argument, you make the point that once we allow A, we must also allow B, C, D and E, as there is no good reason for distinguishing them from A. Your argument is that having to accept D or E will be disastrous. We must, therefore, not allow even the exception of A, however innocuous it might look on its own.
    Responding to a slippery-slope argument can be difficult. There are two ways this can be attempted.
• Deny that the slope is slippery. One response is to suggest that the place where you had drawn the line is a justifiable one and there is no reason why you need to accept that other scenarios would follow.
“I think we can allow an exception to the uniform code for this student because this involves a