Examples Of Naturalistic Fallacy

The term naturalistic fallacy was first coined by the philosopher G.E. Moore. He defined it as an illegitimate derivation of normative conclusions from purely factual premises. In other words, it is the argument that a value statement cannot be defined from a factual one. Moore’s explanation of the naturalistic fallacy stemmed from what he believed, was an undefinable term, the term “good”. He likened the term “good” to a color “yellow” and thus concluded that the term “good” was undefinable. He believed that equating pleasure with goodness was inaccurate. Goodness, Moore implies, is independent of all else, whereas pleasure is dependent on other factors. However, the fact that Moore thinks we somehow innately understand what is good and what is not is questionable. The recourse to intuition seems fatally subjective. If different people claim to have different intuition about what is good, as is in fact the case, then there will be no way to arbitrate between them.
The appeal to nature argument is a derivative of naturalistic fallacy. This argument states that if something is natural it is therefore good. This theory has been used to argue topics like homosexuality, abortion and veganism just to name a few. One might argue that appeal to nature theory, based on the above statement, is definitely a fallacy because not all things that are considered natural are good. Similarly one might also state that not all things that are considered unnatural are bad. For example, antibiotics would be termed as unnatural, however, antibiotics have been paramount in saving the lives of many people. Likewise poison ivy would be considered natural but it can be inferred that those who have ever been afflicted by its uncomfortable effects would not consider it to be a good