The Naturalistic Fallacy

• What is G.E. Moore’s weakness of naturalism?

  The Naturalistic Fallacy
• What is the naturalistic fallacy?

  The naturalistic fallacy, as defined by G.E. Moore, is that it is a mistake to try and define the concept ‘good’ in terms of some natural property, such as ‘pleasant’ or ‘desirable’.
• If Moore is right, then what is the problem with Utilitarianism?

  If Moore is right, then we can see straight away that there is a problem with Utilitarianism, where ‘pleasure’ is at the heart of Bentham’s theory, which says that ‘pleasure is good’, so ‘we ought to seek pleasure‘.
• What did Moore argue in terms of ‘ought‘ and ‘is‘?

  • Moore argued that it is not possible to derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ - we cannot go from: ‘pleasure is good’ to: ‘we ought to seek pleasure‘.
  • Another way of saying this is that WE CANNOT DERIVE MORAL VALUES FROM FACTS.
• Give an example of Moore’s argument that we cannot derive moral values from facts:

  • She is old and lonely (FACT)
  • You ought to euthanise her (MORAL VALUE)
  • If ethical naturalism is right and ethical values are facts, then we should not be able to get two different values (‘help her’/‘euthanise her’) from the same fact (‘she is old and lonely’).
  • Naturalism therefore (according to Moore) fails.