Hey what’s up Thinkers! Kathy Gibbens here…
Let’s start off today by reviewing a fallacy we covered earlier in this season, the Wicked Motive Fallacy. The Wicked Motive Fallacy happens when someone is automatically assumed to be false or lying or wrong just b/c they have bad motives. It’s where someone just focuses on the person’s motives for doing something, without actually asking if something is true or not.
So the question to ask yourself if you think you’re facing a Wicket Motive Fallacy is this: “Is it really true that it’s wrong just b/c they have bad intentions?” because, believe it or not, someone could have bad intentions and still be right.
If you want to review or hear more about this fallacy, go back & check out Episode 95.
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Alright, let’s dive into today’s new fallacy, the Naturalistic Fallacy. The Naturalistic Fallacy happens when someone says that just because something comes naturally to us or happens in nature, it’s therefore right & should be accepted as normal. Or, that because something doesn’t come naturally to us, we shouldn’t use it as a standard for morality.
Let me give you a rather extreme example and this fallacy will make more sense. “Eating our young is natural because it occurs in many animal species.” In this example, someone argues that because there are various animal species who eat their young in nature, it is therefore morally acceptable or justified for humans. Now, I’m being a bit extreme to make this point, but you get it…This argument makes a moral claim from a descriptive observation about nature. In other words, they’re saying that because it happens in nature, it must be morally right. Here are a few other simple examples:
“Cows only eat grass, so we should all be eating vegan diets.”
“It’s natural for humans to be violent, so war is always justified.”
“People get sick all the time from diseases that come from nature, so why should we treat them? After all, it’s survival of the fittest, right?”
“We were all born naked, so it should be ok for us to walk around naked.”
The problem behind the thinking in the Naturalistic Fallacy is that just because something happens in nature or is a part of our human nature doesn’t make it right! Just because something IS doesn’t make it right. And just because something ISN’T doesn’t make it wrong. We have to go one step further and consider what OUGHT to be. We have to consider what is right versus what is wrong. All of us have done things that we know are wrong, but we did it because it just came ‘naturally’...like lying or cheating or stealing something that wasn’t ours. It may have seemed like, ‘this is just who I am’ but that still doesn’t make it ok. Now, I have to say, this is a fallacy that educators and philosophers argue about because it involves the aspect of morality, of right and wrong. And, depending on your worldview, you may think something is right that I believe is wrong! I’m not going to get into all that in this episode, but you need to be aware of it. A person’s worldview affects so much of their thinking!
Now, I know this fallacy sounds similar to the Appeal to Nature fallacy, which says something is more desirable because it is natural (or less desirable if it is unnatural), which I covered back in episode 21. But the Appeal to Nature and the Naturalistic Fallacies are actually different. The difference is that the Naturalistic Fallacy specifically makes judgments about what is ‘normal & moral’ from nature, while the Appeal to Nature Fallacy is a broader concept that uses the idea of "natural" to determine the desirability or superiority of something.
Interestingly, I recently saw a video where a man was using the Naturalistic Fallacy argument to defend his lifestyle of dating multiple women at the same time and refusing to commit to one and settle down and get married. The reason he gave to justify his behavior was that “this is just my nature. It’s who I am. I’m not the type of person to commit to just one woman.” Now, as you guys know, I’m a Christian and I believe that yes, our human nature will want to do all kinds of things that aren’t right but just because we ‘want’ to do them naturally that's not justification for saying that they’re the right thing to do. It can come naturally and still be wrong.
So, the question to ask yourself if you think you’re facing the Naturalistic Fallacy is this: “It may come naturally, but does that mean it’s right?” *repeat*
Remember: When you learn HOW to think, you will no longer fall prey to those who are trying to tell you what THEY want you to think and it all starts with asking one simple question: “Is that really true?”
