Naturalistic Fallacy
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[edit] Definition
The naturalistic fallacy is an informal logical fallacy where a participant implicitly assumes that because something is "natural," it is beneficial or desirable, or alternatively, because it is "unnatural," it is harmful or undesirable.
Close variations on this fallacy would include words like "organic," "man-made," "herbal," and so forth.
This is a fallacy because is does not imply ought. If a person has fallen down and broken his arm, it is not logical to assume that because the arm is broken and was broken naturally, the state of being broken is a desirable one. (The reverse argument, going from ought to is is called the Moralistic Fallacy.)
The above example of favoring organic things is a fallacy (and specifically a variation on the genetic fallacy) because the origin of any substance does not necessarily have anything to do with its biochemical process. The destroying angel (Amanita verna) is 100% natural and one of the most deadly plants known to mankind; sucralose is 100% man-made, and there is no known toxic dose.
Another variation on this fallacy is that behaviors or practices "found in nature" are somehow better than modern behaviors or practices. For example, the idea that the Native Americans "lived in harmony" with nature and were therefore better off for it, or that homosexuality is unnatural and therefore bad. Wearing clothes, sleeping indoors, and refrigerating food to keep it from rotting are also unnatural, but few would wish to forego those comforts.
[edit] Example
Example 1:
- Antagonist: "Sugar is like a two-sided coin: heads – if natural, it can be useful to the body, and tails – if altered by man, it can be harmful to the body." [1]
Sucrose is sucrose; identical molecules have identical effects in the body, whether those molecules are produced synthetically or naturally.
Example 2:
- Antagonist: "We have wiped out plague after plague that has threatened humankind, and we now lead longer, presumably healthier, lives than ever before. But new, more sophisticated diseases always seem to come on the scene as soon as the old ones are brought under control. We may live longer, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we are healthier. Much of the medicine we take today is to treat the symptoms caused by the medicines we take. On average, we Americans spend more money for health care than we spend for food. How long can our new cures keep ahead of new diseases? How many more medical miracles can we afford? How many more battles with Mother Nature can we afford to win?" [2]
Modern medical statistics confirm that we are indeed healthier than we were in centuries past.
(Counter)Example 3:
- Protagonist: "Pre-Columbian peoples lived simply, to be sure, but let’s stop mistaking ignorance and poverty with harmony. It’s an utter myth – we might say an urban myth – that primitive peoples lived with nature harmoniously. Nature devastated them. Nature battered them into early graves. Their ignorance of nature prevented them from achieving much material wealth. To dance to imaginary rain gods or to chant and pray for a child dying of bacterial infection is not to live harmoniously with nature; it is to live most inharmoniously. Nature is doing its thing – failing to water the crops, growing bacteria within a child’s lungs – while human beings who are as ignorant of nature as nature is of human beings, moan, chant, pray, dance, build totems, burn leaves and twigs, all in fruitless, inharmonious efforts to solve the problems.
- It is we today, with our knowledge of how to irrigate fields using science and engineering, and how to make and administer antibiotics, who live harmoniously with nature. We don't demand miracles. We don't expect nature to change its logic simply because we arrogantly wish it to do so. We accept nature's logic and work with it."[3]
