naturalistic fallacy

English

Etymology

Introduced by British philosopher G. E. Moore in his 1903 book Principia Ethica.

Noun

naturalistic fallacy (plural naturalistic fallacies)

1. The fallacious belief that something is automatically good because it is natural or automatically bad because it is unnatural.

   Synonym: appeal to nature

   • 1998 April, Edward O. Wilson, “The Biological Basis of Morality”, in The Atlantic‎^[1]:

     No, we do not have to put moral reasoning in a special category and use transcendental premises, because the posing of the naturalistic fallacy is itself a fallacy. For if ought is not is, what is?

   • 2018, Shoshana Zuboff, chapter 11, in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism:

     It is easy to fall prey to the naturalistic fallacy, which suggests that because the companies are successful, they must also be right.

2. Any attempt to define "good" verbally, instead of treating it as an undefined term, in terms of which other terms are defined.
   • 1903, G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica:

     Yet a mistake of this simple kind has commonly been made about good. It may be true that all things which are good are also something else, just as it is true that all things which are yellow produce a certain kind of vibration in the light. And it is a fact, that Ethics aims at discovering what are those other properties belonging to all things which are good. But far too many philosophers have thought that when they named those other properties they were actually defining good; that these properties, in fact, were simply not other, but absolutely and entirely the same with goodness. This view I propose to call the naturalistic fallacy and of it I shall now endeavour to dispose.

Usage notes

• Whether this second usage is a fallacy is disputed.

See also

• is-ought problem