Trying to understand concept of "naturalistic fallacy"

TheMoralist

My first post in this forum so be nice!

I'm trying to understand the concept of a "naturalistic fallacy".

I thought I understood the idea, then I read the Wikipedia artcle.

I used to understand these to be examples of naturalistic fallacies:

Example 1:
Genetically modified food is bad because this type of genetic modification doesnt happen in nature.

Example 2:
Smoking weed is ok because weed is natural.

My understanding used to be that a naturalistic fallacy was when you make a moral judgement based on what you see in nature. The quote I remember is: "using a desciption to make a moral prescription".

Wikipedia tells me that these are not naturalistic fallacies, instead they are examples of the "is-ought problem", or an "appeal to nature".

Can someone tell me in not too complex terms what a naturalistic fallacy is and is not then?

Thanks!

18AD

I hadn't heard of that before. Interesting read.

It reminded me of this : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Prime
Which seems to be a solution to that problem.

What I got out of it anyway, is that things aren't what they're describing.
For example: I have a plastic bottle. The bottle is plastic.
If then, someone asked what plastic was. You couldn't say a bottle.

Hope that helped. :cool:

Ghost Rider

Although that Wiki article is mainly about Moore's very specialised use of the term "naturalistic fallacy", at the end of the introductory section it does say that an alternative use of it is the belief that "the claim that what is natural is inherently good or right, and that what is unnatural is bad or wrong" is a fallacy. The examples you give are therefore perfectly valid.

TheMoralist wrote:

My first post in this forum so be nice!

I'm trying to understand the concept of a "naturalistic fallacy".

I thought I understood the idea, then I read the Wikipedia artcle.

I used to understand these to be examples of naturalistic fallacies:

Example 1:
Genetically modified food is bad because this type of genetic modification doesnt happen in nature.

Example 2:
Smoking weed is ok because weed is natural.

My understanding used to be that a naturalistic fallacy was when you make a moral judgement based on what you see in nature. The quote I remember is: "using a desciption to make a moral prescription".

Wikipedia tells me that these are not naturalistic fallacies, instead they are examples of the "is-ought problem", or an "appeal to nature".

Can someone tell me in not too complex terms what a naturalistic fallacy is and is not then?

Thanks!

Jackie laughlin

Moralist,
You are correct.

I no longer use Wikipedia. I've discovered some appalling rubbish in areas that I know about and now won't consult it on areas about which I know little or nothing.