ArmouredAbolitionist wrote:The linked Wikipedia page above mentions that these two are different but its description of how they're different doesn't make sense to me.
Don't feel bad, almost nobody understands what the Naturalistic fallacy is.
There is some overlap between the two.
It can be argued that the "Naturalistic Fallacy" isn't even a fallacy, depending on how it's used (although it seems like it's used incorrectly more often than not).
Some use it as a stand-in for assertions that the is-ought problem is insoluble, and that anybody who attempts to derive an 'ought' from an 'is' is employing the naturalistic
fallacy. This is actually not a correct usage, based on its coinage (which is compatible with moral realism), but nonetheless it is used that way quite a bit. See the criticisms section for more on that:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalis ... #Criticism
Here is Moore on the subject, which demonstrates that he did NOT see it as being at odds with moral realism:
That "pleased" does not mean "having the sensation of red", or anything else whatever, does not prevent us from understanding what it does mean. It is enough for us to know that "pleased" does mean "having the sensation of pleasure", and though pleasure is absolutely indefinable, though pleasure is pleasure and nothing else whatever, yet we feel no difficulty in saying that we are pleased. The reason is, of course, that when I say "I am pleased", I do not mean that "I" am the same thing as "having pleasure". And similarly no difficulty need be found in my saying that "pleasure is good" and yet not meaning that "pleasure" is the same thing as "good", that pleasure means good, and that good means pleasure. If I were to imagine that when I said "I am pleased", I meant that I was exactly the same thing as "pleased", I should not indeed call that a naturalistic fallacy, although it would be the same fallacy as I have called naturalistic with reference to Ethics.
— G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica § 12
Confusing enough? No doubt. Which is why many if not most philosophers don't even understand it.
But let's take a couple steps back, and examine a more basic application.
In the
crudest sense, the Naturalistic fallacy may be a non-sequitur or a false equivocation that claims because something is pleasant or enjoyable or personally desired, that it is good, and the inverse would be bad.
E.g.
"Rape is enjoyable to me, therefore rape is good."
"Lions are dangerous/frightening/painful when they eat me, therefore they are bad."
"Methamphetamine is enjoyable, therefore good"
"Donating blood is painful/unpleasant, therefore blood donation is bad"
The hidden premise is that "whatever is enjoyable or desirable by me is universally good", or a simple confusion in the assumption that all good things are pleasant, and all bad things are unpleasant, and all unpleasant things are bad and all pleasant things are good. Or, that is, that "good" and "pleasurable" are actually synonyms. It's the mentality of a young child who hasn't understood the concept of moral grey yet due to complications and consequences.
The appeal to nature fallacy would (if consistent) agree that rape is good (because it's "natural"), but would disagree about lions (since they are also "natural"), and would disagree about meth (because it is not "natural"). It would agree that blood donation is bad, but because it's "unnatural" and not because it's unpleasant.
That should help highlight some of the differences (and similarities).
However, that is only in the crudest sense, without looking at the consequences to those actions.
When you start looking at the consequences of the actions, the Naturalistic fallacy evolves into the pseudophilosophy of 'ethical' egoism. A form of slightly less short sighted hedonism, wherein pleasure is confused with moral good.
Although I'm not sure if I would use the "Naturalistic fallacy" argument against egoism, since the claim itself is probably without force (as Alex Walter wrote), and nobody would really understand what I was saying anyway.
The naturalistic fallacy (correctly used) is at least seemingly a little closer to legitimate than the appeal to nature fallacy (which is more transparently absurd).
The nature of something being pleasant or unpleasant is at least
partially related to morality (that's something Moore understood), but not in such a self centered or superficial way as egoists would have us believe.
The subject of Utilitarianism is more contentious.
Does this quote make more sense in that context?
...the assumption that because some quality or combination of qualities invariably and necessarily accompanies the quality of goodness, or is invariably and necessarily accompanied by it, or both, this quality or combination of qualities is identical with goodness. If, for example, it is believed that whatever is pleasant is and must be good, or that whatever is good is and must be pleasant, or both, it is committing the naturalistic fallacy to infer from this that goodness and pleasantness are one and the same quality. The naturalistic fallacy is the assumption that because the words 'good' and, say, 'pleasant' necessarily describe the same objects, they must attribute the same quality to them.[3]
—Arthur N. Prior, Logic And The Basis Of Ethics
Or again, this:
That "pleased" does not mean "having the sensation of red", or anything else whatever, does not prevent us from understanding what it does mean. It is enough for us to know that "pleased" does mean "having the sensation of pleasure", and though pleasure is absolutely indefinable, though pleasure is pleasure and nothing else whatever, yet we feel no difficulty in saying that we are pleased. The reason is, of course, that when I say "I am pleased", I do not mean that "I" am the same thing as "having pleasure". And similarly no difficulty need be found in my saying that "pleasure is good" and yet not meaning that "pleasure" is the same thing as "good", that pleasure means good, and that good means pleasure. If I were to imagine that when I said "I am pleased", I meant that I was exactly the same thing as "pleased", I should not indeed call that a naturalistic fallacy, although it would be the same fallacy as I have called naturalistic with reference to Ethics.
— G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica § 12
He's saying that yes, pleasure is good, but good and pleasure are not the same things.
The kind of fallacy he actually describes is one such that it would be hard to imagine people making in earnest. Yet 'ethical' egoists seem to.
I just wouldn't plan to use the word much, unless somebody accuses you of it.
