Is the "naturalistic fallacy" a fallacy?

[Arcade22]

The question is, (all other things being equal) are "natural" things generally safer and healthier than non-natural ones? The answer IMHO is probably yes, because for millions of years our ancestors have evolved as part of nature and have managed to live with natural things in relative safety and health.

And I'm sure you have plenty of research and statistics to justify your belief, right?

 

[Old man]

Let's imagine a list of all the chemicals produced by nature, versus a list of chemicals that are commercially available. Which list do you think would contain a higher percentage of harmful substances?

Probably the 'nature' list.

There are millions of chemical compounds produced in low concentrations by plants and animals. We've identified very few, and have tested (for toxicity) virtually none of them.

Many of the compounds that we have identified in plants have turned out to be defensive chemicals. Most of the ones that are produced in large quantities (say, solanine) definitely ARE toxic.

ETA: Do you really believe that methanol, ethanol, and fructose are 'harmless'?

ETA2: Or do you believe that an apple is a 'chemical'?

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

I guess you could put it that way; but I'd say more like places where humans have wandered, and can wander, without techonological assistance.

The point is the same that there is circular or tautological reasoning. You can say that natural environments are friendly to humans only if you define natural environments as being those environments friendly to humans. You can substitute "where humans have wandered, and can wander, without technological assistance" for words like "friendly" or "desirable".

ETA: As several have pointed out, if you look realistically at all of nature, only a teeny tiny fraction of it fits that category.

ETA: Also, there is a sort of version of the anthropic principle at work here. If you're only marveling at how amenable to humans the environments we evolved to live in during low technological times (I would further quibble that there have never been "humans" without technology), you are failing to realize that we in fact evolved in those environments and therefore adapted to them. It reminds me of Douglas Adams' observation about a hypothetical sentient puddle:

. . . imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in’an interesting hole I find myself in’fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.

 

[Dinwar]

As a note, we're not sure how hard it was for various hunter-gatherers to find food, but some research suggests that in many instances it involves less hours of work than farming.

For instance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society

The issue is consistency. Hunter/gatherers are at the whim of Nature--if a disease goes through a herd they rely on, many of them starve. Agriculture provides for a far more stable food source. More work, but less chance of starvation.

In biology, everything is a trade-off. Do you work more for a more stable food supply? Or do you work less and accept the chance of starvation?

I guess you could put it that way; but I'd say more like places where humans have wandered, and can wander, without techonological assistance.

I've spent the last 2.75 months in an area that humans got to back when "high tech" meant Clovis points. Even back then the environment would kill you if you weren't extremely careful. We can still find paths that are straight lines from one water source to another, carved out long before metalworking occurred in the area.

I would further quibble that there have never been "humans" without technology

It's no quibble, it's ecological fact. Stone tools are older than our species, meaning that no anotomically modern human society ever existed under the conditions Ron Webb is proposing.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

The issue is consistency. Hunter/gatherers are at the whim of Nature--if a disease goes through a herd they rely on, many of them starve. Agriculture provides for a far more stable food source. More work, but less chance of starvation.

Also, doesn't agriculture support denser populations? There is a survival advantage (at least in an intelligent animal living in complex social groups) to living in denser populations, I would think.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

The question is, (all other things being equal) are "natural" things generally safer and healthier than non-natural ones?

How are you distinguishing natural and non-natural? If humans observe a plant growing in the wild, then cultivate that plant, is that natural or non-natural? Granted that over many generations of doing this, artificial selection will result in a plant with more of the trait that first made it useful to us. Taking that into account, how much improvement by artificial selection does the cultivated plant have to undergo before it stops being "natural"? (Logical conundrum: admitting that artificial selection improves these wild plants means you'd basically be arguing that an improvement somehow means they are made to be less desirable.)

If humans observe a bacterium producing a useful chemical, then cultivate that bacterium to produce that chemical in greater quantities, is that natural or non-natural? If the resulting useful chemical is the same in either case, how could the two different conditions cause the chemical produced in one condition or the other to be more or less desirable?

Even refined iron that comes from ores (the geology of which I'm sure Dinwar could tell you much more) rich with the element iron that was forged by the life cycle of long gone stars is simply a bit of human-refined nature. (And of course, putting humans outside of "nature" is arbitrary too, right?)

Unless you define "natural" in a stricter way (such as natural as opposed to supernatural), your placing anything into this category is arbitrary and makes you prone to commit the circular reasoning I mentioned in my previous post. If you use a more strict definition like the one I just proposed, then everything we're talking about is "natural", and the difference you're speaking of is simply the degree to which humans have improved or refined something. Again, your left then with the argument that improving or refining things is makes things worse, which runs contrary to conventional usage of the words and to a huge amount of evidence.

 

[Dinwar]

Also, doesn't agriculture support denser populations? There is a survival advantage (at least in an intelligent animal living in complex social groups) to living in denser populations, I would think.

I believe so. Definitely later on--imagine people trying to live in the densities seen in New York or Los Angeles via a hunter/gatherer mode of life!

If the resulting useful chemical is the same in either case, how could the two different conditions cause the chemical produced in one condition or the other to be more or less desirable?

This is the biggest question for the "Nature is better!" crowd. Chemical properties are based on the make-up of the chemical. C6H22O11 is the same, whether manufactures by an apple's cells or by a factory.

As I said before, the only caveat to that statement is that some chemicals can work in combination, to produce results neither chemical produces on its own. A simple example of this is antifreeze--the chemical and water can both be used by themselves, but combined they are vastly more effective. Other chemicals constrain one another--some chemicals are dangerous, and other chemicals can help prevent them from interacting with the body. Anyone who's eaten bread or pasta before going to the bar has demonstrated that effect (and anyone who hasn't has demonstrated the necessity of it!). That said, those interactions are by no means outside the realm of that which humans can know. If the interaction is useful, we can learn it.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

As I said before, the only caveat to that statement is that some chemicals can work in combination, to produce results neither chemical produces on its own. A simple example of this is antifreeze--the chemical and water can both be used by themselves, but combined they are vastly more effective. Other chemicals constrain one another--some chemicals are dangerous, and other chemicals can help prevent them from interacting with the body.

I suppose that's similar to the way an artificial flavor differs from a natural flavor. The flavor of a real banana is a whole bunch of different chemicals. An artificially banana-flavored product tastes sort of like a caricature of banana flavor because its flavor is produced by a lot of only one (or maybe a few) of the strongest-flavored chemicals.

But that's more a matter of marketing (and maybe economics). A candy maker certainly could realistically reproduce the same proportion and variety of flavor-producing chemicals you get in a banana. If you ate a candy so flavored, it'd probably seem overly dull because it tastes just like an actual banana. Also, it'd probably cost way too much to do that anyway.

[ETA: Ignoring for the moment that the naturally flavored real banana is the result of a great deal of artificial selection!]

 

[GrzeTor]

It depends on how you treat the preference for natural stuff. If for you it is just a heuristics: a simple way to get reasonable results, that you know are not perfect but OK, then there's no fallacy. If on the other hand you treat it as a dogma, then it is a fallacy.
In general you can't use a word "fallacy" for something that is a heuristics that more-or-less works and is simple. Eg. Michael Pollans "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." is not a fallacy as an advice, despite the fact that you can find a combination of plants that are harmful, or that you can find more complicated, but better full-blown diets.
Dogmas should always work, so if there is just one situation where they fail - then they fail as a dogma totally. All this makes "list of fallacies" quite relativistic, as the possibility of using word fallacy depends on how a particula person treats particular what's in the description on the list.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

It depends on how you treat the preference for natural stuff. If for you it is just a heuristics: a simple way to get reasonable results, that you know are not perfect but OK, then there's no fallacy. If on the other hand you treat it as a dogma, then it is a fallacy.
In general you can't use a word "fallacy" for something that is a heuristics that more-or-less works and is simple. Eg. Michael Pollans "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." is not a fallacy as an advice, despite the fact that you can find a combination of plants that are harmful, or that you can find more complicated, but better full-blown diets.
Dogmas should always work, so if there is just one situation where they fail - then they fail as a dogma totally. All this makes "list of fallacies" quite relativistic, as the possibility of using word fallacy depends on how a particula person treats particular what's in the description on the list.

I addressed that approach earlier (as have others here somewhat less explicitly).

A "fallacy" implies the use of deductive reasoning, but even if you want to use inductive reasoning, the pronouncements the OP has made (that natural things are more likely to be better) are just as flawed.

Since he's obviously not considering all of the natural universe (or as Dinwar said even all of the Earth or even all of the biosphere of the Earth) most of which is comprised of places humans couldn't possibly survive without technology (one of proffered definitions of what is less "desirable"), this approach uses circular reasoning by an arbitrary definition of what constitutes "natural" or "nature". If it's defined only as that which is desirable, then of course natural is more likely to be desirable.

That's like saying balloons are more likely to be green than non-balloons as long as you define balloons as "green things".

 

[GrzeTor]

"Since he's obviously not considering all of the natural universe (or as Dinwar said even all of the Earth or even all of the biosphere of the Earth) most of which is comprised of places humans couldn't possibly survive without technology (one of proffered definitions of what is less "desirable"), this approach uses circular reasoning by an arbitrary definition of what constitutes "natural" or "nature"."

What you don't understand is that in normal human communication we don't make statements that pretend to be an universal truth about everything. The messages we normal, non-philosoper humans send when using words usually concerns certain context. "Natural is better" is typically used in the context of food or cloth, in which it is a useful heuristics, but it is unlikely to be used in the contexts like transportation - nobody claims natural travel on a donkey is better than a travel on an artificial airplane.

Your considerations about universal truth statements are useless for normal people, they reside only in a tiny niches of philosophy, theology etc.

 

[Aridas]

"Since he's obviously not considering all of the natural universe (or as Dinwar said even all of the Earth or even all of the biosphere of the Earth) most of which is comprised of places humans couldn't possibly survive without technology (one of proffered definitions of what is less "desirable"), this approach uses circular reasoning by an arbitrary definition of what constitutes "natural" or "nature"."

What you don't understand is that in normal human communication we don't make statements that pretend to be an universal truth about everything. The messages we normal, non-philosoper humans send when using words usually concerns certain context. "Natural is better" is typically used in the context of food or cloth, in which it is a useful heuristics, but it is unlikely to be used in the contexts like transportation - nobody claims natural travel on a donkey is better than a travel on an artificial airplane.

Your considerations about universal truth statements are useless for normal people, they reside only in a tiny niches of philosophy, theology etc.

To be short, the OP was trying to make an argument against the "naturalistic fallacy." It failed, given that the OP didn't understand either what that fallacy is or why it's considered a fallacy. I don't think that anyone here has challenged that the "natural" label, when found in supermarkets, for example, may well have a correlation with the product being a healthier product. That's also not invoking the fallacy in question in the first place.

Your post here suggests that you really aren't understanding the discussion, either way.

 

[bjornart]

No, it isn't. Nature is full of stuff that's indistinguishable from food with simpel examination, but will kill you if you eat it. Both substances from nature and from a lab require testing and examination to determine their actual properties.

 

[bjornart]

I don't think that anyone here has challenged that the "natural" label, when found in supermarkets, for example, may well have a correlation with the product being a healthier product. That's also not invoking the fallacy in question in the first place.

Yes it is. Labeling your product "natural" implies "this is natural and therefore better", which is precisely what the fallacy is.

 

[Aridas]

Yes it is. Labeling your product "natural" implies "this is natural and therefore better", which is precisely what the fallacy is.

First question, then. Legally, for it to be labelled "natural" in that setting, are there standards that it must reach? Second, does it actually claim to be better because it's natural or is it naming a "valid" property, like, say, that the product is largely pink, which does not actually mean that it's better or healthier, but does mean that some people might find it to be more desirable? Third, correlation is not causation, especially when the set of variables is limited very, very significantly and any correlation that may or may not exist is very likely caused by a variety of other reasons. Though this is not a question, it specifically relates to the statement which you dispute.

 

[Mark6]

"Natural is better" is typically used in the context of food or cloth, in which it is a useful heuristics, but it is unlikely to be used in the contexts like transportation - nobody claims natural travel on a donkey is better than a travel on an artificial airplane.

I can think of at least one person who does claim that:

Alain de Botton

 

[Slimething]

I can think of at least one person who does claim that:

Alain de Botton

Thanks for posting that. I got a good chuckle out of the title:

A world without planes​

Followed by the intro:

The philosopher, writer and recent writer-in-residence at Heathrow airport imagines a world without aircraft.

If I lived at Heathrow, I would also fantasize about a world without aircraft!

 

[Lowpro]

First question, then. Legally, for it to be labelled "natural" in that setting, are there standards that it must reach? Second, does it actually claim to be better because it's natural or is it naming a "valid" property, like, say, that the product is largely pink, which does not actually mean that it's better or healthier, but does mean that some people might find it to be more desirable? Third, correlation is not causation, especially when the set of variables is limited very, very significantly and any correlation that may or may not exist is very likely caused by a variety of other reasons. Though this is not a question, it specifically relates to the statement which you dispute.

To the first, it wouldn't matter what standard is set since it would be arbitrary. Whatever standard set could always be argued against.

To the second, better is an outcome and not an inherent characteristic. Every human being would be "better" by not eating sugar at all (you make all your energy from a myriad of foods and ingesting carbohydrates is ridiculous on its face until...) unless you needed the energy then and there It's circumstantial. Most "unnatural" food is better for you since it's available and able to be stored easily. "Better" is relative to your environment.

Third, you're using a caveat emptor as a scare tactic. What are the characteristics of the correlation and its condition to the outcome?

 

[Aridas]

To the first, it wouldn't matter what standard is set since it would be arbitrary. Whatever standard set could always be argued against.

And it would be the standard that would be in question, not the label for it.

To the second, better is an outcome and not an inherent characteristic. Every human being would be "better" by not eating sugar at all (you make all your energy from a myriad of foods and ingesting carbohydrates is ridiculous on its face until...) unless you needed the energy then and there It's circumstantial. Most "unnatural" food is better for you since it's available and able to be stored easily. "Better" is relative to your environment.

"Natural" being used on a label can be considered an assigned characteristic, on the other hand. One that represents an arbitrary use of the word, which may not actually imply better or healthier.

Third, you're using a caveat emptor as a scare tactic. What are the characteristics of the correlation and its condition to the outcome?

None were named, the point being that that saying that there may be a correlation between two arbitrary groups does not automatically invoke the fallacy in question.

 

[Lowpro]

And it would be the standard that would be in question, not the label for it.

Yup

"Natural" being used on a label can be considered an assigned characteristic, on the other hand. One that represents an arbitrary use of the word, which may not actually imply better or healthier.

If it's an assigned characteristic dictated by a standard then it's not an arbitrary use of words anymore, it's measured by the standard. Now if the standard is about as rigorous as a 5 year old's logic then that leaves the door open to negotiate the standard. But I think at the end of the day no one with sense gives a crap. It's all natural by definition and I think most hippies or whatever these people are mean to insinuate is a difference of intervention and magnitude of that intervention. Or natural could be defined as an inverse of artificial where humans are the agent. I dunno...

None were named, the point being that that saying that there may be a correlation between two arbitrary groups does not automatically invoke the fallacy in question.

Well "saying" there's a correlation between two groups isn't as interesting as demonstrating it, so there's no real point to waving around such a caveat emptor. Now, if there was a correlation that was named or demonstrated I'd find that very interesting. Correlation along with condition does make a case for causation though. As for the two arbitrary groups (I only counted one BTW, the rigor that demonstrates "natural", I'm guessing the other group is "better") I think that if the Naturalistic Fallacy is defined with "natural is best" as a tautology does invoke the naturalistic fallacy if the rigor of natural is defined and in itself is also "best". But I never took philosophy...