Is the "naturalistic fallacy" a fallacy?

[Ron Webb]

Then by "natural environments for humans" you mean places where humans have wandered and not been killed by the environment?

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 hope you at least see why that sort of question-begging makes your comparison useless.

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. That's not question-begging, it's relevant evidence. Statistically speaking, if it didn't kill our ancestors, it probably won't kill us. Products of technology don't have that track record.

 

[Pulvinar]

... Statistically speaking, if it didn't kill our ancestors, it probably won't kill us. Products of technology don't have that track record.

So those dangerous chemicals would explain why there are only 7 billion of us left now?

Your statistics need some rethinking.

 

[Donn]

No seriously. Whatever we ate then is the same stuff we eat now. Same food. Its changed shape and unusual ingredients and chemicals have gone into some of it to preserve it, but it's still all the same stuff we ever ate from the hand to the mouth to the fork to the mouth.

It's all natural, as it ever was.

 

[Ron Webb]

For one thing, a lab is a very specific subset of "unnatural" where chemical substances are normally stored for the express reason that they are particularly strongly active. It's not a random sampling of man made materials in the way that a randomly chosen natural environment is.

If you wanted a more parallel experiment, you'd compare a random natural environment with a random man made environment, like your bedroom, or, yes, a supermarket, or a bus station.

I'm trying to compare the products of technology with the products of nature. A "man made" environment still consists of predominantly natural products (wooden furniture, cotton/linen bedding, fruits and vegetables, etc.).

But I agree that finding an environment containing a representative selection of synthetic substances is difficult. How about this? 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?

When the appeal to nature is invoked, it's generally a case of someone saying that "natural" substances or practices are inherently better than "unnatural" alternatives. It's important to note that we're comparing proposed alternatives. So we're not selecting arbitrarily from the whole sets of "natural" and "unnatural" we're comparing the substances and practices in those sets which have been deemed safe or useful by other evaluations.

If we limit our consideration to things which have been deemed safe, then by definition the risk in either subset is zero. But we're trying to estimate the probability of unknown risks here. Does it not make sense to look at the risks we know about, and extrapolate that to unknown risks as well? In other words, the category with the most known risks might also have the most unknown risks?

 

[Aridas]

I'm trying to compare the products of technology with the products of nature. A "man made" environment still consists of predominantly natural products (wooden furniture, cotton/linen bedding, fruits and vegetables, etc.).

Your list of predominantly natural products is somewhat biased, at best. Things like wooden furniture tend to be very much not natural and often are coated with synthetic chemicals.

But I agree that finding an environment containing a representative selection of synthetic substances is difficult.

Well, anywhere with plastics...

How about this? 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?

If I pointed out that any answer to that would make a terrible argument for... anything, really, would you accept that?

Frankly, I'd suggest just stopping with the vague, unfocused attempts to make the point that natural is generally better than synthetic in all areas, especially when it appears that you only really care about it because you want to say that natural foods are better for people than synthetic, or likely more properly, processed foods.

My take on the matter though, is fairly simple. Organic foods are never better because they're natural. They may be better because fewer poisons were used on them while they were growing and because of different methods of growing them, on the other hand. Processed foods are never worse because they're not as directly natural. They may be less healthy for a large variety of reasons, though.

If we limit our consideration to things which have been deemed safe, then by definition the risk in either subset is zero. But we're trying to estimate the probability of unknown risks here. Does it not make sense to look at the risks we know about, and extrapolate that to unknown risks as well? In other words, the category with the most known risks might also have the most unknown risks?

You know... dealing with unknowns is a tricky business in which it's pretty much never safe to make assumptions. Much better to just stick with the knowns and investigate the unknowns as opportunity arises, then revise as necessary once new knowns are available.

 

[Zelenius]

And Ray Comfort was pwnd a few years ago for a simlar display of ignorance: he described how perfect bananas were and that they must have been designed. Well, of course they're designed. Designed by humans. Wild bananas are downright inedible. They're not sweet, have hardly any fruit per pod, and they have hard seeds the size of grapeshot. But our ancestors saw potential and cultivated many varietals that are very delicious.

I hope this is not too OT, but this is one of my biggest issues with the "paleo" diet crowd.

In my experience, so many of them are ignorant of this simple fact. Some think they are
eating "paleo" by eating a lot of fruits and vegetables(which is a good thing BTW), not realizing how so many if the wild ancestors of modern fruits and vegetables were inedible, or only marginally edible. If they were edible, they tended to be a lot less sweet and usually a lot smaller. And while our ancestors ate lean meats by hunting animals, hardly any "paleo" adherents hunt on a regular basis, or can afford eating venison or free range meats. The very high fat beef and pork many humans eat today bares little resemblance to the lean meats our paleolithic ancestors ate.

The anti-grain dogma of the paleo diet suffers from the same problems.

The paleo diet makes use of the naturalistic fallacy in the extreme, along with the is/ought fallacy. The paleo diet isn't all bad. I agree with minimizing or eliminating sugar and eating more fruits and vegetables.

 

[Mark6]

But I agree that finding an environment containing a representative selection of synthetic substances is difficult. How about this? 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 biggest (by volume) portion of commercially available chemicals are various plastics. Plastics are indigestible, but also non-poisonous -- basically, they are chemically inert. Swallowing small amount of plastic is no more dangerous than swallowing same amount of rock. Probably less dangerous, since rocks with their higher density are more likely to cause mechanical injury to your digestive tract.

Second very large portion of commercially available chemicals are hydrocarbons like gasoline. They are definitely dangerous to swallow, but they also taste foul, and anyone getting a mouthful would immediately spit them out. Much like most poisonous natural substances we evolved to avoid.

Same for nitrate and phosphate based chemical fertilizers. They taste like feces... because they are artificial equivalent of feces.

These three categories cover at least 95% of all artificial substances -- and they are no more dangerous than "natural" stuff. (Keep in mind, vast majority of natural substances are inedible.) Substances which are so toxic that just getting them into mouth would cause death or great harm, or poisonous yet innocuous-tasting, are actually small minority. Probably as small as similarly-dangerous natural substances. But with one major difference:

When humans make something really dangerous, like red fuming nitric acid, we take steps to ensure nobody comes in contact with it. When nature makes something equally nasty, like botulism or Amanita mushrooms... it just grows wild. For anyone to stumble onto. And that's what makes "natural" actually far more dangerous than "artificial".

What little "natural" still exists, that is. I am willing to bet OP does not live in Australia. Europe and North America are so thoroughly reshaped for human habitation, they really do not have any original wilderness any more. Africa, Asia and South America, less so. Australia least of all. And it is dangerous. As in, parents teach children not to reach into grass for the ball without seeing it, because there are things in that grass which can kill you -- very naturally.

 

[bjornart]

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. That's not question-begging, it's relevant evidence. Statistically speaking, if it didn't kill our ancestors, it probably won't kill us. Products of technology don't have that track record.

Nonsense.

We've managed to live with natural things by learning which are safe and which aren't and not to assume. We manage to live with things created by technology the same way.

You're creating silly scenarios to defend a asinine interpretation of what people argue against when calling others out for committing the "naturalistic fallacy".

 

[blutoski]

Of course there are exceptions, as I said. But still, if I blindfolded you and forced you to pick something at random and eat it, would you rather do so in a natural wilderness or a DuPont lab?

Why a DuPont lab, though? Most of the 'unnatural' acreage in the world is dedicated to food production. If I had to choose between eating something in a wild region vs an agricultured region, I would choose the latter. It's probably a grain field or rice paddy.

 

[blutoski]

I think it does. It doesn't decide the matter conclusively, but it does have an impact.

Sorry what I meant was that there is no correlation between finding that something is natural with also finding that it is right. Understanding its properties will inform the decision, but it could go either way.

 

[blutoski]

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. That's not question-begging, it's relevant evidence. Statistically speaking, if it didn't kill our ancestors, it probably won't kill us. Products of technology don't have that track record.

I don't think it happened quite that way. Our ancestors learned which natural phenomena were dangerous ("don't go near those - that's what killed Bob") and our legacy of survival and recent thrival is the result of originally avoiding the known natural dangers, and later, producing safer alternatives through exterminating them or cultivating them into safer descendants.

We weren't safe walking around - we learned how to be safe over time by documenting the suffering of our less fortunate peers.

 

[NorfolkAtheist]

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...

This seems to be based on little more than a hunch.

The International Agency for Research in Cancer has found that 62% of known human carcinogens are naturally occurring.
http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cpdb/pdfs/FoodQuality.pdf

 

[phildonnia]

Are you implying that it might be a useful heuristic elsewhere, but not in a supermarket? Why not?

Now that you mention, I really can't think of a (non-supermarket) environment where I would be faced with both natural and artificial chemicals, where I would be able to distinguish between them without having any other information regarding their toxicity.

In the abstract, I would sooner eat a random chemical found in the ancestral environment than a random synthetic chemical.

 

[Slimething]

I find the OP to be a conflation of an incorrect statement of the Naturalistic Fallacy and an Argument from Ignorance. First, it's a ridiculous argument that choosing something at random from nature is less dangerous to something from a "chemical lab" without specifying what chemical. That choice would never occur in reality so it's a foolish posit to begin with.

Second, supposed you randomly selected a toadstool in forest and blundered on a jar of sucrose in the chemistry lab. Taking bets?

The best question to ask here is given the same substance would it be more healthful for you if produced by nature and NOT refined in a lab or refined/synthesized in a lab. Hate to break it to Ron Webb but the lab version is much safer for you, ironically, for the same reasons you're mistakenly making in the OP. Lab staff could remove dangerous congeners and impurities that may be contained in the natural version. Take sugar as an example. Would you prefer to eat the stuff I can purify and certify pure from a lab or suck on cane grown in lead-rich soil?

The OP is, in the words of W. Pauli, "not even wrong". It's a fallacy and does nothing to promote reasoning of nutrition or safety.

 

[Dinwar]

I am currently working in an area where within the last month two people died from being outside. I am dead serious: they were outside, dehydrated, and died. THAT is nature. In contrast, artificial interventions such as artificial refrigeration, insulation, camelbacks, backpacks, hats, high-tech fabrics, etc. have kept those working under me alive. Pretty clearly illustrates the errors of the OP, I should think.

As for randomly selecting something in nature, it's an issue of scale. On average, if we limit ourselves to Earth, what you select will be under enough pressure to turn your bones int diamonds, and hot enough to flash-boil you while it lights your bones on fire. If we expand our scale to include even the Earth/Moon system, on average you will select nothing. If we limit ourselves to a random thing in an ecosystem, it'll be air, soil, or water. My point is that the question makes a presupposition regarding the nature of reality that simply doesn't stand up to even the most casual critical analysis.

If we limit ourselves to foodstuffs, it actually gets worse. I'm currently in the Mojave Desert. Many of the staples of this area prior to Europeans ariving on the scene required extensive processing--baking in limestone pits, for example, or soaking in rivers. Even meat is extremely dangerous if you don't process it. We don't just cook meat because we like grill marks.

The real issue with edible items found in nature in regards to health is that the concentration of any useful chemical will be highly variable. Well, the concentration of ALL chemicals will be highly variable--meaning that you may get a lot of the good stuff and little of the bad stuff, vice versa, or anything in between.

There are two issues with artificial chemicals intended for human consumption: concentration and synergy. Artificial chemicals are always (or almost always) at higher concentrations than they can be found in nature, which can cause problems. And artificial chemicals are typically far more pure than their natural counterparts, which means they lack any other chemicals to synergystically interact with. Either of these can be overcome--primarily because we can know there's something TO overcome. In natural items, this is not the case. You can't fix what you don't know is broken.

In the abstract, I would sooner eat a random chemical found in the ancestral environment than a random synthetic chemical.

In all honesty, and without any hyperbole or exageration, I would probably kill anyone who demanded I make that choice. I would consider it an act of self defence--no one who forced me to make such a choice could be viewed, rationally, as anything other than a deadly foe intent on killing me.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

It's fallacious because it's a non sequitur.
The observation that something is natural does not impact our evaluation of its desireability.

Exactly this.

And aside from the logical problem as you describe it, there is also the use of arbitrary definitions of what is considered "natural". It's usually vaguely defined as something not human-made. If we apply that definition rigorously, humans couldn't survive at all in most--virtually all-- of the natural universe without the use of something unnatural. So in fact, speaking inductively rather than deductively, that which is natural is most likely undesirable.

ETA: As usual, after I posted, I see that the thread has moved on, and as usual, Dinwar has already made the point I was trying to make but has done so much better than I did.

 

[megaresp]

...if I blindfolded you and forced you to pick something at random and eat it...

By forcing me you're doing something unnatural. I would be surprised to find that our ancestors wandered around 'nature' forcing each other to eat things they picked out at random. Our ancestors' teenage years would have been especially challenging.

...would you rather do so in a natural wilderness or a DuPont lab?

If you'll allow me the dignity of making my own selections, even blind-folded I'll back myself to find the cafeteria. So I pick the DuPont lab.

I hope they have donuts.

 

[Puppycow]

Rocks, sand, dirt, wood, weeds, pine needles, poop, rotting meat, poisonous plants. These are some common natural things that might select "randomly". None of them should be eaten.

Anyway, what is the point of this exercise? Clearly natural does not necessarily mean good to eat, nor does artificial necessarily mean inedible or poisonous.

If nature was overflowing with edible food, why would we need to invent agriculture? Hunter-gathers had to spend a lot of time looking for or hunting food. They couldn't just walk into the nearest jungle and grab the first plant they see. Have you spent much time out in the woods? How much of what you saw there was edible? Most of it is clearly not.

 

[Cavemonster]

If nature was overflowing with edible food, why would we need to invent agriculture? Hunter-gathers had to spend a lot of time looking for or hunting food. They couldn't just walk into the nearest jungle and grab the first plant they see. Have you spent much time out in the woods? How much of what you saw there was edible? Most of it is clearly not.

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

 

[mutile]

Yes it is, the clue is right there in the title.