Definition
The naturalistic fallacy, as it is colloquially used, refers to the logical fallacy made when one derives moral prescriptions from naturally occurring phenomena or factual statements about the world.
Introduction
Moore (1903) coined the term the naturalistic fallacy to refer to instances in which one conflates morality with any other construct (e.g., pleasure, fulfillment, social good, God’s will). Moore argued that, for instance, while morality and pleasure may both be used to describe a particular act, it does not follow that morality and pleasure are equivalent constructs. The modern usage of the naturalistic fallacy, however, most often refers to David Hume’s is/ought fallacy, wherein Hume (1739) argues that statements regarding how things ought to be (i.e., moral statements) cannot exclusively be derived from how things are (i.e., factual statements). In other words, moral...
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Hudson, M.B., Nicolas, S. (2016). Naturalistic Fallacy, The. In: Weekes-Shackelford, V., Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_449-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_449-1
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