A Couple of Fallacies

I’ve been thinking about two fallacies a lot lately. The naturalistic fallacy and the appeal to nature fallacy are easy to confuse for each other. They are siblings, but not twins. But that’s not why I’ve been thinking about them. I’ve been wondering when, or if, it’s ok to commit these fallacies.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. For anyone who isn’t a philosophy geek, I should explain what these fallacies are. From Wikipedia, “In metaethics, the naturalistic fallacy is the claim that it is possible to define good in terms of merely described entities, properties, or processes such as pleasant, desirable, or fitness.” It is related to the is-ought problem. Basically, just because something is pleasant doesn’t mean it is good. It doesn’t follow logically that the is of pleasantness means you ought to do something.

Again, from Wikipedia, “An appeal to nature is a rhetorical technique for presenting and proposing the argument that “a thing is good because it is ‘natural’, or bad because it is ‘unnatural’.”” This is the more common of the two fallacies. It’s pretty self-explanatory.

Now back to the question at hand, is it ok to commit these fallacies? And if so, when? These might seem like absurd questions. I mean they’re fallacies, right? I know that. You shouldn’t ever knowingly commit a fallacy. But there’s a small voice in my head that won’t shut up about it.

That voice is wondering how far from nature human beings are able to get. We evolved to desire the pleasant and shun the unpleasant, didn’t we? It’s almost like we’re hardwired to equate pleasure and goodness. Likewise, it seems built in that we find unnatural things creepy and bad. Can we overcome those intuitions? Even if we know and understand these fallacies, can we consistently recognize them as fallacious?

I don’t know the answers to these questions. But if the answer is no, should philosophers take that into account in constructing moral theories? I have no idea, but it seems like a question worth asking.