Editing Naturalistic fallacy (section)

==Criticism==
{{See also|Is–ought problem#Responses}}

[[Bernard Williams]] called Moore's use of the term ''naturalistic fallacy'' a "spectacular misnomer", the matter in question being metaphysical, as opposed to rational.<ref>{{cite book |first1=Bernard Arthur Owen |last1=Williams |author-link=Bernard Williams |year=2006 |title=Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy |location=[[Abingdon, Oxfordshire]] |publisher=Taylor & Francis |page=121 |isbn=978-0-415-39984-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=WrNMQCZA6FMC&pg=121}}</ref>

Some philosophers reject the naturalistic fallacy or suggest solutions for the proposed is–ought problem.

===Bound-up functions===
Ralph McInerny suggests that ''ought'' is already bound up in ''is'', insofar as the very nature of things have ends/goals within them. For example, a clock is a device used to keep time. When one understands the function of a clock, then a standard of evaluation is implicit in the very description of the clock, i.e., because it ''is'' a clock, it ''ought'' to keep the time. Thus, if one cannot pick a good clock from a bad clock, then one does not really know what a clock is. In like manner, if one cannot determine good human action from bad, then one does not really know what the human person is.<ref>{{cite book|last=McInerny|first=Ralph|title=Ethica Thomistica|year=1982|publisher=Cua Press|chapter=Chp. 3}}</ref>{{page needed|date=February 2016}}

===Irrationality of anti-naturalistic fallacy===
The [[Fallacy fallacy|belief that naturalistic fallacy is inherently flawed has been criticized as lacking rational bases]], and labelled anti-naturalistic fallacy.<ref>Casebeer, W. D., "Natural Ethical Facts: Evolution, Connectionism, and Moral Cognition", ''Cambridge, MA: MIT Press'', (2003)</ref>{{page needed|date=February 2016}} For instance, Alex Walter wrote:

:"The naturalistic fallacy and Hume's 'law' are frequently appealed to for the purpose of drawing limits around the scope of scientific inquiry into ethics and morality. These two objections are shown to be without force."<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Walter | first1 = Alex | year = 2006 | title = The Anti-naturalistic Fallacy: Evolutionary Moral Psychology and the Insistence of Brute Facts | journal = Evolutionary Psychology | volume = 4 | pages = 33–48 | doi = 10.1177/147470490600400102 | doi-access = free }}</ref>

That is because said beliefs implicitly assert that there is no connection between the facts and the norms (in particular, between the facts and the mental process that led to adoption of the norms).<ref name="nat-fal">
{{citation
 | work= TheFreeDictionary
 | title= naturalistic fallacy
 | url = http://www.thefreedictionary.com/naturalistic+fallacy
}}.</ref> However, philosophers show that these connections are inevitable. 

A very basic example is that if people view rescuing people as morally correct, this would shape their beliefs on what constitutes danger and what situations warrant intervention. For wider-ranging examples, if one believes that a certain ethnic group of humans have a population-level statistical hereditary predisposition to destroy civilization while the other person does not believe that such is the case, that difference in beliefs about factual matters will make the first person conclude that persecution of said ethnic group is an excusable "necessary evil" while the second person will conclude that it is a totally unjustifiable evil. 

Similarly, if two people think it is evil to keep people working extremely hard in extreme poverty, they will draw different conclusions on de facto rights (as opposed to purely semantic rights) of [[property]] owners. The latter is dependent on whether they believe property owners are responsible for the aforementioned exploitation. One who accepts this premise would conclude that it is necessary to persecute property owners to mitigate exploitation. The one who does not, on the other hand, would conclude that the persecution is unnecessary and evil.<ref>Susana Nuccetelli, Gary Seay (2011) "Ethical Naturalism: Current Debates"</ref><ref>Peter Simpson (2001) "Vices, Virtues, and Consequences: Essays in Moral and Political Philosophy"</ref>

===Inconsistent application===
Some critics of the assumption that is-ought conclusions are fallacies point at observations of people who purport to consider such conclusions as fallacies do not do so consistently. Examples mentioned are that [[evolutionary psychology|evolutionary psychologists]] who gripe about "the naturalistic fallacy" do make is-ought conclusions themselves when, for instance, alleging that the notion of [[Noble savage|the blank slate]] would lead to totalitarian social engineering or that certain views on sexuality would lead to attempts to convert homosexuals to heterosexuals. Critics point at this as a sign that charges of the naturalistic fallacy are inconsistent rhetorical tactics rather than detection of a fallacy.<ref>Jan Narveson (2002) "Respecting persons in theory and practice: essays on moral and political philosophy"</ref><ref>H. J. McCloskey (2013) "Meta-Ethics and Normative Ethics"</ref>

===Universally normative allegations of varied harm===
A criticism of the concept of the naturalistic fallacy is that while "descriptive" statements (used here in the broad sense about statements that purport to be about facts regardless of whether they are true or false, used simply as opposed to normative statements) about specific differences in effects can be inverted depending on values (such as the statement "people X are predisposed to eating babies" being normative against group X only in the context of protecting children while the statement "individual or group X is predisposed to emit greenhouse gases" is normative against individual/group X only in the context of protecting the environment), the statement "individual/group X is predisposed to harm whatever values others have" is universally normative against individual/group X. This refers to individual/group X being "descriptively" alleged to detect what other entities capable of valuing are protecting and then destroying it without individual/group X having any values of its own. For example, in the context of one philosophy advocating child protection considering eating babies the worst evil and advocating industries that emit greenhouse gases to finance a safe short term environment for children while another philosophy considers long term damage to the environment the worst evil and advocates eating babies to reduce overpopulation and with it consumption that emits greenhouse gases, such an individual/group X could be alleged to advocate both eating babies and building autonomous industries to maximize greenhouse gas emissions, making the two otherwise enemy philosophies become allies against individual/group X as a "common enemy". The principle, that of allegations of an individual or group being predisposed to adapt their harm to damage any values including combined harm of apparently opposite values inevitably making normative implications regardless of which the specific values are, is argued to extend to any other situations with any other values as well due to the allegation being of the individual or group adapting their destruction to different values. This is mentioned as an example of at least one type of "descriptive" allegation being bound to make universally normative implications, as well as the allegation not being [[falsifiability|scientifically self-correcting]] due to individual or group X being alleged to [[rationalization (psychology)|manipulate]] others to support their alleged all-destructive agenda which dismisses any scientific criticism of the allegation as "part of the agenda that destroys everything", and that the objection that some values may condemn some specific ways to persecute individual/group X is irrelevant since different values would also have various ways to do things against individuals or groups that they would consider acceptable to do. This is pointed out as a falsifying counterexample to the claim that "no descriptive statement can in itself become normative".<ref>Steven Scalet, John Arthur (2016) "Morality and Moral Controversies: Readings in Moral, Social and Political Philosophy"</ref><ref>N.T. Potter, Mark Timmons (2012) "Morality and Universality: Essays on Ethical Universalizability"</ref>

===Non-synonymous properties===
In 1939, [[William Frankena]]<ref name="Frankena 1939">{{cite journal |title=The Naturalistic Fallacy |first=W. K. |last=Frankena |journal=Mind |volume=48 |number=192 |date=October 1939 |pages=464–477 |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/mind/XLVIII.192.464 |jstor=2250706}}</ref> critiqued [[G. E. Moore]]'s conception of the naturalistic fallacy. Frankena stated that, in arguing that ''good'' cannot be defined by natural properties, Moore was trying to avoid a broader confusion caused by attempting to define a term using non-synonymous properties.<ref name="IEP Moore">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Moore, George Edward |url=http://www.iep.utm.edu/moore/ |encyclopedia=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |accessdate=March 31, 2011 |last=Preston |first=Aaron |date=December 30, 2005}}</ref> 

Frankena also argued that ''naturalistic fallacy'' is a complete misnomer because it is neither limited to naturalistic properties nor necessarily a fallacy. On the first word (''naturalistic''), he noted that Moore rejected defining ''good'' in non-natural as well as natural terms.<ref name="Hamid">{{cite book |pages=93–96 |title=G.E. Moore: A Study of His Ethics |last=Hamid |first=Md. Abdul |isbn=978-81-7099-174-8 |publisher=Mittal Publications |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lxnsElfqa70C&pg=PA94 |year=1989}}</ref> Frankena rejected the idea that the second word (''fallacy'') represented an error in [[reasoning]] &ndash; a fallacy as it is usually recognized &ndash; rather than an error in [[semantics]].<ref name="Ridge">{{cite encyclopedia |encyclopedia=Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |last=Ridge |first=Michael |title=Moral Non-Naturalism |date=June 26, 2008 |accessdate=March 31, 2011 |editor=Edward N. Zalta |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-non-naturalism/}}</ref> 

In Moore's [[open-question argument]], because questions such as "Is that which is pleasurable good?" have no definitive answer, then pleasurable is not synonymous with good. Frankena rejected this argument as: the fact that there is always an open question merely reflects the fact that it makes sense to ask whether two things that may be identical in fact are.<ref name="Flew">{{cite encyclopedia |title=Definist fallacy |encyclopedia=A Dictionary of Philosophy |page=85 |last=Flew |first=Antony |author-link=Antony Flew |year=1984 |publisher=Macmillan |isbn=978-0-312-20923-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MmJHVU9Rv3YC&pg=PA85}}</ref> Thus, even if good ''were'' identical to pleasurable, it makes sense to ask whether it is; the answer may be "yes", but the question was legitimate. This seems to contradict Moore's view which accepts that sometimes alternative answers could be dismissed without argument; however, Frankena objects that this{{what|date=December 2024}} would be committing the fallacy of [[begging the question]].<ref name="Ridge"/>