pug846

This is driving me crazy. There has been a rash of posting that X is morally good because it’s good for natural selection, or because humans have an “innate nature” to do X, etc.

For the love of all that is holy. Before you post in this forum, look up what the “naturalistic fallacy” is. Just because something is one way, doesn’t mean it morally ought to be that way. It’s true that most of the principles we follow have arisen through agreements in time, have been affected by human evolution, etc. However, given that we are discussing ethics, we are tying to figure out how we ought to be acting.

So please, before you come in here and say that X is good because it works well with natural selection or because it has come about through thousand of years of agreement amongst humans, spend a little bit of time reading some articles on ethics…particularly on the naturalistic fallacy.

Thank you and have a nice day.

[ August 22, 2002: Message edited by: pug846 ]</p>

99Percent

Hi Pug, maybe you can look up for a good reference of "naturalistic fallacy" for us to read?

The Other Michael

Hi 99percent,

If people go to the <a href="http://www.infidels.org/desk.shtml" target="_blank">Sec Web reference desk</a> they'll find a link to the Meta-encyclopedia of Philosophy. Typing in "naturalistic fallacy" returns several entries.

cheers,
Michael
MF&P Moderator, Second Class

tronvillain

Of course, one is free to simply point out that something is one way, as well as to argue that there is not any particular way that it ought to be.

K

pug846:

The naturalistic fallacy is based on the idea that we can recognize an intrinsic goodness of things that can not be defined from other concepts. What is the reason to suppose that this is true?

The natural selection basis of morality would say that morality is not an irreducible intrinsic property. It would mean that good and bad are also not objective absolutes. They are just names we give to instincts that we have evolved to allow us to create functional societies that in turn allow us to survive and procreate.

Therefore, the paraphrase of the argument you gave, "X is morally good because it?s good for natural selection", would be meaningless. I think a more accurate way of stating it would be:

X is part of a set of instincts that we have inherited through evolutionary pressures on our ancestors that allow us to work as part of a society to aid in our own survival and procreation. We generally refer to those insticts as "good".

echidna

Maybe tangential, but when Jane Goodall was doing her anthropological work with the chimps of Gombe, she uncovered many extremely human-like behaviour patterns amongst them, including all the bad characteristics including murder, bigotry & cruelty.

At the time she received great pressure not to release her findings, because of the implications that human negative behaviour was therefore innate, uncontrollable & naturally pre-destined

Quite the contrary in my view, acknowledging and understanding our innate animalistic drives is the key to correcting those which we find morally wrong.

Doubting Didymus

Pug, the naturalistic fallacy doesn't apply to most of these discussions. The naturalitstic fallacy applies to statements like 'if we believe evolution, we must believe that the sick and old should be killed'. The statement imlplies that what is, is what should be, and we have a naturalistic fallacy.

However, statements like 'killing the sick and the old would aid the human race through natural selection', are not implying that something is so, therefore it should be. This statement is specifically saying 'X is good for the human race, therefore X should be'. There is no naturalistic fallacy.

There is an unjustified assumption, however, which is that the human race as a whole would in fact benifit from the scourging of the weak. This is a highly tentative assumption, which I profoundly disagree with. The naturalistic fallacy, however, does not apply.