Naturalistic fallacy

[2046]

So, that's a bad explanation. First because that's not "the naturalistic fallacy," as discussed by philosophers in Moore (1903) which is named. That one has to do with the indefinability of the good. So this must be a new one. But in this case, it would be a strawman for these reasons:

 

A.) In order to qualify as an argument, you have to have 3 terms. That's why the clock argument and the breastfeeding arguments are bad. They're not actually arguments.

 

B.) You can say they're enthemymes. Okay, fine. Most of what we call "argument" in casual conversation is enthymeme. But in philosophy, enthymeme is short hand for I fucked up and made a bad argument and now let me fix it. Especially when you are trying to abide by the principle of clarity and already labeling your premises and conclusions. So, okay, let's add in our missing premises and what do we get? We get C.

 

C.) Take the following argument:

P1. We ought to do what's natural.

P2. Breastfeeding is natural.

C. We ought to breastfeed.

This is a bad argument even with all three terms in place. It's bad because it suffers from ambiguity, not because of some alleged "inferring values from facts." it is entirely ambiguous as to what "natural" means here, and that's the problem.

The "naturalistic fallacy" is supposed to be refuting ethical naturalism. We act against nature all the time! Vaccines! But no ethical naturalist argues like this. The concept of nature being employed is not merely "whatever happens to occur without human intervention," but rather something more like "in accordance with nature." It refers to human nature, including the faculties humans employ to change their environment and make things like vaccines. The supposed fallacy is accordingly, just a strawman.