The naturalistic fallacy is an alleged logical fallacy concerning the semantics and metaphysics of ethical value. British philosopher G.E. Moore introduced the term and the charge of fallacy in his 1903 book Principia Ethica. Naturally, though, the rough idea can be found in earlier works (e.g., by British philosophers David Hume and Richard Price).
Overview
Moore claims that the naturalistic fallacy is committed by those who mistakenly think that the term "good" and the property goodness can be analyzed in terms of some other property. To take the typical example, hedonists in ethics sometimes hold that "good" and goodness can be analyzed in terms of the natural property being pleasant. Such hedonists have gone beyond the basic hedonist thesis that whatever is pleasant is good, and into the analysis of value concepts and properties. Moore insists that any such attempt at analysis is a deep mistake, and that intrinsic value cannot be understood in terms of some other kind of concept or property, but must instead be accepted as indefinable, simple, and non-natural. Moore's book opens with the dictum of Bishop Butler that "Everything is what it is, and not another thing"; Moore's basic contention is that value is what it is, and not another thing. He called his view "ethical non-naturalism".
Moore (1903, 13) refers to the naturalistic fallacy as “naturalistic” because in the sentence ‘pleasure is good’, the subject (‘pleasure’) of the predicate names a natural quality, yet, or so Moore supposed, the predicate itself (‘is good’) names a non-natural (and indefinable) quality. Hence, by conflating a natural quality with a non-natural quality, one commits a naturalistic fallacy. Yet as Moore (1903, 13-14) himself noted, naturalistic fallacies are a subset of a more general type of fallacy that occurs whenever one attempts to define that which is inherently indefinable. Moore left this more general logical fallacy unnamed, but "the definitional fallacy" would be an apt name for this more general fallacy. For example, it would be a definitional fallacy to note that ripe lemons are yellow, but then leap to the conclusion that ‘yellow’ means the same as ‘lemon’. The words 'yellow' and 'lemon' both name natural qualities; therefore, strictly speaking, the naturalistic part of the fallacy is not committed. However, ‘yellow’, like 'good', names a simple, primitive quality that cannot be defined in terms of other words (Moore 1903, 7). If one wants to learn the definition of ‘yellow’, it is useless to read the dictionary and learn that ‘yellow’ names the color of egg yolks and ripe lemons, or that ‘yellow’ names the primary color 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. Yellow, as phenomenologically perceived, is nothing else other than what it is. To learn the true ostensive definition of ‘yellow’, yellow must be experienced.
Hence, the naturalistic fallacy may be avoided by: (1) denying that moral predicates name non-natural qualities; or (2) or by attempting to define (non-natural) moral predicates in non-natural terms. According to Moore's larger point that moral predicates are indefinable, however, any attempt to define moral predicates will still commit a definitional fallacy.
Thus, despite his use of the name "naturalistic fallacy", Moore claimed that the very same fallacy was committed by theorists who take supernatural or metaphysical properties (rather than natural properties) to serve as the basis for ethics. Given that Moore's real targets are semantic reductionism (the position that the term 'good' may be defined with non-moral terms and concepts), and metaphysical reductionism (the position that the property goodness is identical to, or constituted by, non-moral properties), a better label for the alleged error might be "the reductionist fallacy". It is also worth noting that Moore's explanation of what he means by "natural" and "non-natural" properties is rather unclear, and that Moore later characterized his discussion of this issue as "utterly silly and preposterous". The important lesson, for Moore, is just that the term "good" and the property goodness are semantically and metaphysically sui generis.
Moore argues against analyses of value with the so-called "Open Question Argument" strategy. Take questions like (for example) "Granted that x is pleasant, is x good?", and statements like "Anything that is pleasant is also good". According to Moore, these questions are open and these statements are significant; and they will remain so no matter what is substituted for "pleasure". Moore concludes from this that any analysis of value is bound to fail. In other words, if value could be analyzed, then such questions and statements would be trivial and obvious. Since they are anything but trivial and obvious, value must be indefinable. Critics of Moore's arguments sometimes claim that he is appealing to general puzzles concerning analysis (cf. the paradox of analysis ), rather than revealing anything special about value. Other responses appeal to the Fregean distinction between sense and reference, allowing that value concepts are special and sui generis, but insisting that value properties are nothing but natural properties (this strategy is similar to that taken by non-reductive materialists in philosophy of mind).
N.B. Many people use the phrase "naturalistic fallacy" to characterize inferences of the form "This behavior is natural; therefore, this behavior is morally acceptable" or "This behavior is unnatural; therefore, this behavior is morally unacceptable". Such inferences are common in discussions of homosexuality and cloning, to take two examples. (See this article on homosexuality by Massimo Pigliucci, and Wikipedia's entry on Social Darwinism.) While such inferences may indeed be fallacious, it is important to realize that Moore is not concerned with them. He is instead concerned with the semantic and metaphysical underpinnings of ethics.
Additionally, many alternative health advocates fall in to the naturalistic fallacy because they claim that because something is natural, it is safe and effective as a health treatment. Unfortunately, this is wrong both on principle (nature has made poison ivy, snake venom and the bubonic plague which are neither safe nor effective as medicine) and in practice (St. John's Wort is a natural herb sometimes used by herbalists as a treatment for depression and can be very dangerous when misused). Similarly with genetic modification, many opponents claim that it is unnatural and, by definition, undefendable. Similarly, organic foods are often defended on the basis that they are "natural", and therefore have qualities which non-organic products do not have, even if the two are indistinguishable.
This use of the term "naturalistic fallacy" to describe the deduction of an ought from an is (the Is-ought problem), has inspired the use of mutually reinforcing terminology which describes the converse (deducing an is from an ought) either as the "reverse naturalistic fallacy" or the "moralistic fallacy".
References
Moore, George Edward. 1903. Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
See also
External links
Last updated: 10-15-2005 03:29:29
