View source for Philosophy:Naturalistic fallacy

{{Short description|Argument asserting that it is fallacious to explain something good reductively}}
{{For|the claim that something is good or right because it is natural (or bad or wrong because it is unnatural)|Appeal to nature}}In [[Philosophy:Meta-ethics|philosophical ethics]], the '''naturalistic fallacy''' is the claim that it is possible to define [[Philosophy:Good|good]] in terms of natural entities, or properties such as ''pleasant'' or ''desirable''. The term was introduced by British philosopher [[Biography:G. E. Moore|G. E. Moore]] in his 1903 book ''Principia Ethica''.<ref>Moore, G.E. [http://fair-use.org/g-e-moore/principia-ethica/s.10#s10p1 ''Principia Ethica'' § 10 ¶ 3]</ref>

Moore's naturalistic fallacy is closely related to the [[Philosophy:Is–ought problem|is–ought problem]], which comes from [[Biography:David Hume|David Hume]]'s ''[[Philosophy:A Treatise of Human Nature|A Treatise of Human Nature]]'' (1738–40). However, unlike Hume's view of the is–ought problem, Moore (and other proponents of [[Philosophy:Ethical non-naturalism|ethical non-naturalism]]) did not consider the naturalistic fallacy to be at odds with [[Philosophy:Moral realism|moral realism]].

The ''naturalistic fallacy'' should not be confused with the ''[[Medicine:Appeal to nature|appeal to nature]]'', which is exemplified by forms of reasoning such as "Something is natural; therefore, it is morally acceptable" or "This property is unnatural; therefore, this property is undesirable." Such inferences are common in discussions of [[Medicine:Medicine|medicine]], sexuality, [[Biology:Environmentalism|environmentalism]], [[Social:Gender role|gender role]]s, race, and [[Philosophy:Carnism|carnism]].

==Different common uses==

===The is–ought problem===
{{Main|Philosophy:Is–ought problem}}

The term ''naturalistic fallacy'' is sometimes used to describe the deduction of an ''ought'' from an ''is'' (the [[Philosophy:Is–ought problem|is–ought problem]]).<ref>W. H. Bruening, "Moore on 'Is-Ought'," ''Ethics'' 81 (January 1971): 143–49.</ref>  This usually takes the form of saying that If people ''do'' something (e.g., eat three times a day, smoke cigarettes, dress warmly in cold weather), then people ''ought to'' do that thing.  It becomes a naturalistic fallacy when the is–ought problem ("People eat three times a day, so it is morally good for people to eat three times a day") is justified by claiming that whatever practice exists is a natural one ("because eating three times a day is pleasant and desirable").

In using his [[Philosophy:Categorical imperative|categorical imperative]], Kant deduced that experience was necessary for its application. But experience on its own or the imperative on its own could not possibly identify an act as being moral or immoral. We can have no certain knowledge of morality from them, being incapable of deducing how things ought to be from the fact that they happen to be arranged in a particular manner in experience.

[[Biography:Jeremy Bentham|Bentham]], in discussing the relations of law and morality, found that when people discuss problems and issues they talk about how they wish it would be, instead of how it actually is. This can be seen in discussions of [[Philosophy:Natural law|natural law]] and [[Philosophy:Positive law|positive law]]. Bentham criticized natural law theory because in his view it was a naturalistic fallacy, claiming that it described how things ought to be instead of how things are.

===Moore's discussion===
[[Image:Principia Ethica title page.png|thumb|right|200px|The title page of ''Principia Ethica'']]

According to [[Biography:G. E. Moore|G. E. Moore]]'s ''Principia Ethica'', when philosophers try to define ''good'' reductively, in terms of natural properties like ''pleasant'' or ''desirable'', they are committing the naturalistic fallacy.
{{Blockquote|...the assumption that because some quality or combination of qualities invariably and necessarily accompanies the quality of goodness, or is invariably and necessarily accompanied by it, or both, this quality or combination of qualities is identical with goodness. If, for example, it is believed that whatever is pleasant is and must be good, or that whatever is good is and must be pleasant, or both, it is committing the naturalistic fallacy to infer from this that goodness and pleasantness are one and the same quality. The naturalistic fallacy is the assumption that because the words 'good' and, say, 'pleasant' necessarily describe the same objects, they must attribute the same quality to them.<ref>[[Biography:Arthur Prior|Prior, Arthur N.]] (1949), [http://www.utilitarian.org/texts/prior.html#intro Chapter 1] of ''Logic And The Basis Of Ethics'', [[Organization:Oxford University Press|Oxford University Press]] ({{ISBN|0-19-824157-7}})</ref>|Arthur N. Prior|''Logic And The Basis Of Ethics''}}

In defense of [[Philosophy:Ethical non-naturalism|ethical non-naturalism]], Moore's argument is concerned with the semantic and metaphysical underpinnings of ethics. In general, opponents of [[Philosophy:Ethical naturalism|ethical naturalism]] reject ethical conclusions drawn from natural facts.

Moore argues that good, in the sense of [[Philosophy:Intrinsic value (ethics)|intrinsic value]], is simply ineffable: it cannot be defined because it is not a natural property, being "one of those innumerable objects of thought which are themselves incapable of definition, because they are the ultimate terms by reference to which whatever 'is' capable of definition must be defined".<ref>Moore, G.E. [http://fair-use.org/g-e-moore/principia-ethica/s.10#s10p1 ''Principia Ethica'' § 10 ¶ 1]</ref> On the other hand, ethical naturalists eschew such principles in favor of a more empirically accessible analysis of what it means to be good: for example, in terms of pleasure in the context of [[Philosophy:Hedonism|hedonism]].

{{quotation|That "pleased" does not mean "having the sensation of red", or anything else whatever, does not prevent us from understanding what it does mean. It is enough for us to know that "pleased" does mean "having the sensation of pleasure", and though pleasure is absolutely indefinable, though pleasure is pleasure and nothing else whatever, yet we feel no difficulty in saying that we are pleased. The reason is, of course, that when I say "I am pleased", I do not mean that "I" am the same thing as "having pleasure". And similarly no difficulty need be found in my saying that "pleasure is good" and yet not meaning that "pleasure" is the same thing as "good", that pleasure ''means'' good, and that good ''means'' pleasure. If I were to imagine that when I said "I am pleased", I meant that I was exactly the same thing as "pleased", I should not indeed call that a naturalistic fallacy, although it would be the same fallacy as I have called naturalistic with reference to Ethics.|G. E. Moore|[http://fair-use.org/g-e-moore/principia-ethica/s.12 ''Principia Ethica'' § 12]}}

In §7, Moore argues that a property is either a complex of simple properties, or else it is irreducibly simple. Complex properties can be defined in terms of their constituent parts but a simple property has no parts. In addition to ''good'' and ''pleasure'', Moore suggests that colour [[Philosophy:Qualia|qualia]] are undefined: if one wants to understand yellow, one must see examples of it. It will do no good to read the dictionary and learn that ''yellow'' names the colour of egg yolks and ripe lemons, or that ''yellow'' names the primary colour between green and orange on the spectrum, or that the perception of yellow is stimulated by electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength of between 570 and 590 nanometers, because yellow is all that and more, by the open question argument.

[[Biography:Bernard Williams|Bernard Williams]] called Moore's use of the term ''naturalistic fallacy'', a "spectacular misnomer", the question being metaphysical, as opposed to rational.<ref>{{cite book |first1=Bernard Arthur Owen |last1=Williams |year=2006 |title=Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy |location=Abingdon, Oxfordshire |publisher=Taylor & Francis |page=121 |isbn=978-0-415-39984-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WrNMQCZA6FMC&pg=121}}</ref>

===Appeal to nature===
{{Main|Medicine:Appeal to nature}}

Some people use the phrase, ''naturalistic fallacy'' or ''[[Medicine:Appeal to nature|appeal to nature]]'', in a different sense, to characterize inferences of the form "Something is natural; therefore, it is morally acceptable" or "This property is unnatural; therefore, this property is undesirable." Such inferences are common in discussions of [[Medicine:Medicine|medicine]], [[Social:Homosexuality|homosexuality]], [[Biology:Environmentalism|environmentalism]], and [[Philosophy:Veganism|veganism]].
{{quote|The naturalistic fallacy is the idea that what is found in nature is good. It was the basis for [[Social:Social Darwinism|social Darwinism]], the belief that helping the poor and sick would get in the way of evolution, which depends on the survival of the fittest. Today, biologists denounce the naturalistic fallacy because they want to describe the natural world honestly, without people deriving morals about how we ought to behave (as in: If birds and beasts engage in adultery, infanticide, cannibalism, it must be OK).|sign = [[Biography:Steven Pinker|Steven Pinker]]<ref name="Pinker">{{Cite web|title = Q&A: Steven Pinker of 'Blank Slate'|url = http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2002/10/30/QA-Steven-Pinker-of-Blank-Slate/26021035991232/|website = UPI|access-date = December 5, 2015|date = October 30, 2002|last = Sailer|first = Steve|archive-date = December 5, 2015|url-status = live|archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20151205074319/http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2002/10/30/QA-Steven-Pinker-of-Blank-Slate/26021035991232/}}</ref>}}

==Criticism==

Some philosophers reject the naturalistic fallacy and/or suggest solutions for the proposed is–ought problem.
===Bound-up functions===
Ralph McInerny suggests that ''ought'' is already bound up in ''is'', insofar as the very nature of things have ends/goals within them. For example, a clock is a device used to keep time. When one understands the function of a clock, then a standard of evaluation is implicit in the very description of the clock, i.e., because it ''is'' a clock, it ''ought'' to keep the time. Thus, if one cannot pick a good clock from a bad clock, then one does not really know what a clock is. In like manner, if one cannot determine good human action from bad, then one does not really know what the human person is.<ref>{{cite book|last=McInerny|first=Ralph|title=Ethica Thomistica|year=1982|publisher=Cua Press|chapter=Chp. 3}}</ref>{{page needed|date=February 2016}}

===Irrationality of anti-naturalistic fallacy===
The belief that naturalistic fallacy is inherently flawed has been criticized as lacking rational bases, and labelled anti-naturalistic fallacy.<ref>Casebeer, W. D., "Natural Ethical Facts: Evolution, Connectionism, and Moral Cognition", ''Cambridge, MA: MIT Press'', (2003)</ref>{{page needed|date=February 2016}} For instance, Alex Walter wrote:

:"The naturalistic fallacy and Hume's 'law' are frequently appealed to for the purpose of drawing limits around the scope of scientific inquiry into ethics and morality. These two objections are shown to be without force."<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Walter | first1 = Alex | year = 2006 | title = The Anti-naturalistic Fallacy: Evolutionary Moral Psychology and the Insistence of Brute Facts | journal = Evolutionary Psychology | volume = 4 | pages = 33–48 | doi = 10.1177/147470490600400102 | doi-access = free }}</ref>

That is because said beliefs implicitly assert that there is no connection between the facts and the norms (in particular, between the facts and the mental process that led to adoption of the norms).<ref name="nat-fal">
{{citation
 | work= TheFreeDictionary
 | title= naturalistic fallacy
 | url = http://www.thefreedictionary.com/naturalistic+fallacy
}}.</ref>

However, philosophers show that these connections are inevitable. 

A very basic example is that if people view rescuing people as morally correct, this would shape their beliefs on what constitutes danger and what situations warrant intervention. For wider-ranging examples, if one believes that a certain ethnic group of humans have a population-level statistical hereditary predisposition to destroy civilization while the other person does not believe that such is the case, that difference in beliefs about factual matters will make the first person conclude that persecution of said ethnic group is an excusable "necessary evil" while the second person will conclude that it is a totally unjustifiable evil. 

Similarly, if two people think it is evil to keep people working extremely hard in extreme poverty, they will draw different conclusions on de facto rights (as opposed to purely semantic rights) of property owners. The latter is dependent on whether they believe property owners are responsible for the aforementioned exploitation. One who accepts this premise would conclude that it is necessary to persecute property owners to mitigate exploitation. The one who does not, on the other hand, would conclude that the persecution is unnecessary and evil.<ref>Susana Nuccetelli, Gary Seay (2011) "Ethical Naturalism: Current Debates"</ref><ref>Peter Simpson (2001) "Vices, Virtues, and Consequences: Essays in Moral and Political Philosophy"</ref>

===Inconsistent application===
Some critics of the assumption that is-ought conclusions are fallacies point at observations of people who purport to consider such conclusions as fallacies do not do so consistently. Examples mentioned are that [[Philosophy:Evolutionary psychology|evolutionary psychologists]] who gripe about "the naturalistic fallacy" do make is-ought conclusions themselves when, for instance, alleging that the notion of [[Social:Noble savage|the blank slate]] would lead to totalitarian social engineering or that certain views on sexuality would lead to attempts to convert homosexuals to heterosexuals. Critics point at this as a sign that charges of the naturalistic fallacy are inconsistent rhetorical tactics rather than detection of a fallacy.<ref>Jan Narveson (2002) "Respecting persons in theory and practice: essays on moral and political philosophy"</ref><ref>H. J. McCloskey (2013) "Meta-Ethics and Normative Ethics"</ref>

===Universally normative allegations of varied harm===
A criticism of the concept of the naturalistic fallacy is that while "descriptive" statements (used here in the broad sense about statements that purport to be about facts regardless of whether they are true or false, used simply as opposed to normative statements) about specific differences in effects can be inverted depending on values (such as the statement "people X are predisposed to eating babies" being normative against group X only in the context of protecting children while the statement "individual or group X is predisposed to emit greenhouse gases" is normative against individual/group X only in the context of protecting the environment), the statement "individual/group X is predisposed to harm whatever values others have" is universally normative against individual/group X. This refers to individual/group X being "descriptively" alleged to detect what other entities capable of valuing are protecting and then destroying it without individual/group X having any values of its own. For example, in the context of one philosophy advocating child protection considering eating babies the worst evil and advocating industries that emit greenhouse gases to finance a safe short term environment for children while another philosophy considers long term damage to the environment the worst evil and advocates eating babies to reduce overpopulation and with it consumption that emits greenhouse gases, such an individual/group X could be alleged to advocate both eating babies and building autonomous industries to maximize greenhouse gas emissions, making the two otherwise enemy philosophies become allies against individual/group X as a "common enemy". The principle, that of allegations of an individual or group being predisposed to adapt their harm to damage any values including combined harm of apparently opposite values inevitably making normative implications regardless of which the specific values are, is argued to extend to any other situations with any other values as well due to the allegation being of the individual or group adapting their destruction to different values. This is mentioned as an example of at least one type of "descriptive" allegation being bound to make universally normative implications, as well as the allegation not being [[Philosophy:Falsifiability|scientifically self-correcting]] due to individual or group X being alleged to [[Philosophy:Rationalization (psychology)|manipulate]] others to support their alleged all-destructive agenda which dismisses any scientific criticism of the allegation as "part of the agenda that destroys everything", and that the objection that some values may condemn some specific ways to persecute individual/group X is irrelevant since different values would also have various ways to do things against individuals or groups that they would consider acceptable to do. This is pointed out as a falsifying counterexample to the claim that "no descriptive statement can in itself become normative".<ref>Steven Scalet, John Arthur (2016) "Morality and Moral Controversies: Readings in Moral, Social and Political Philosophy"</ref><ref>N.T. Potter, Mark Timmons (2012) "Morality and Universality: Essays on Ethical Universalizability"</ref>

==See also==
{{col div|colwidth=30em}}
* [[Medicine:Appeal to nature|Appeal to nature]]
* [[Medicine:Evidence-based medicine|Evidence-based medicine]]
* Appeal to novelty
* [[Social:Appeal to tradition|Appeal to tradition]]
* [[Philosophy:Definist fallacy|Definist fallacy]]
* [[Philosophy:Evolution of morality|Evolution of morality]]
* [[Philosophy:Fact–value distinction|Fact–value distinction]]
* [[Philosophy:Meta-ethics|Meta-ethics]]
* [[Philosophy:Moralistic fallacy|Moralistic fallacy]]
* [[Philosophy:Naturalism|Philosophical naturalism]]
* [[Philosophy:Norm|Norm]]
* [[Philosophy:Open-question argument|Open-question argument]]
* Principia Ethica
* [[Philosophy:The Right and the Good|The Right and the Good]]
* [[Philosophy:Value theory|Value theory]]
{{colend}}

==Notes==
{{Reflist}}

==References==
* {{cite book |last=Moore |first=George Edward |title=Principia Ethica |url=https://archive.org/details/brieflymoorespri0000dani |year=1903 |location=Cambridge |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0-334-04040-X |url-access=registration }}

==Further reading==
*{{cite journal |first1=W. K. |last1=Frankena |title=The Naturalistic Fallacy |journal=Mind |volume=XLVIII |issue=192 |pages=464–77 |jstor=2250706 |year=1939 |doi=10.1093/mind/XLVIII.192.464}}
*{{cite journal |first1=Oliver |last1=Curry |year=2006 |title=Who's afraid of the naturalistic fallacy? |journal=Evolutionary Psychology |volume=4 |pages=234–47 |doi=10.1177/147470490600400120 |doi-access=free }}
*{{cite journal |first1=Alex |last1=Walter |year=2006 |title=The anti-naturalistic fallacy: Evolutionary moral psychology and the insistence of brute facts |journal=Evolutionary Psychology |volume=4 |pages=33–48 |doi=10.1177/147470490600400102 |doi-access=free }}
*{{cite journal |title=On the inappropriate use of the naturalistic fallacy in evolutionary psychology|last1=Wilson |first1=David Sloan |last2=Dietrich |first2=Eric |last3=Clark |first3=Anne B. |journal=Biology and Philosophy |volume=18 |pages=669–81 |year=2003 |doi=10.1023/A:1026380825208 |issue=5|s2cid=30891026 }}

==External links==
* [http://fair-use.org/g-e-moore/principia-ethica/ Principia Ethica] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210412230825/http://fair-use.org/g-e-moore/principia-ethica |date=2021-04-12 }}
* {{cite SEP |url-id=moore |title=G.E. Moore}}
* {{cite SEP |url-id=moral-non-naturalism |title=Moral non-naturalism}}
* [http://www.fallacyfiles.org/adnature.html#Exposure Appeal to Nature] entry in ''The Fallacy Files''

{{Fallacies}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Naturalistic Fallacy}}
[[Category:Concepts in ethics]]

{{Sourceattribution|Naturalistic fallacy}}