The moral naturalistic fallacy and hunting for sport.

[Dylab]

I have been reading Pinker's The Blank Slate and it mentions the naturalistic fallacy which the author recognizes as acknowledging something as being moral because it is natural. It is something so overwhelmingly obvious yet I heard many intelligent people on the left and the right including myself use it before. I thought of many examples of the use of this fallacy and besides the obvious homosexuality is unnatural bit the thing that stood out is the argument oftenused for hunting.

Maybe with some exceptions I don't really think hunting is immoral for whatever reason you do it. But as I understand it many people justify hunting because it is used for food. The justification is what I don't understand. I'm assuming that most hunting is done in industrilized nations and is not done out of necessity. Also that hunting for your food instead of buying at the store will in most cases probably not alleviate world hunger. The point I'm making is that there doesn't seem to be much difference in my opinion to argue for the greater good here over any moral qualms one might have over hunting.

The only justification for the reasoning I outline that I can see (I could be missing something) is that hunting is a natural way of subsistence therfore it is moraly fine. Which as I understand it would be fall under the naturalistic fallacy. I've heard people justify eating meat because thats what many animals do so I don't find this line of reasoning being used to be so far-fetched. I could easily be wrong though so any help in clarification would be appreciated.

[Igopogo]

This gets to the heart of discussing what is moral.

When we are born we have no information as to how we came to be, however, we find that we are aware of our existance. We find ourselves on a planet with diverse life all around us, and many clues to Earth's chaotic past & the long evolution of life, (plus our relatively recent development of consciousness). We see evidence of destructive chance events that have lead to mass extinctions. We can see the complicated intertwining of life cycles with immense diversity of functioning living organisms. We also see signs of the vastness and harshness of the universe, & the rarity of our situation (and the precariousness of our situation). We also have ample evidence that human consciousness is having a profound effect on the chance environment that gave rise to us.

Since this is what we know through our experiences & discoveries, we should use this information to make wise choices about how we choose to live (ie: ethics).

Books like the bible are completely invalid as authorities on the subject, since we know they are products of people like ourselves, (with even less information at their disposal than we have now).

What then should be the basis of our ethical choices? I would suggest:

- prolonged survival for our species, (which in turn means respect for the webs of life that we are part of yet don't fully understand)
-systematic search for understanding of our universe, (and particularly life on Earth)
-long term sustainability based on wise choices from what we can learn about the system that gave us life.


Based on lessons learned from our past, we have to be careful of not making ethical choices based on assumptions or the arrogance that comes with discovery. We should be as careful as we can that we don't impose our vision of how we think the world should work on our environment, as there is no credibility that this assumption works, and much tangible evidence that this attitude is detrimental to sustainable life on Earth.

What else would you use other than what we can observe as working in nature as a foundation in trying to determine ethical behavior?

[Yahweh]

Originally posted by Dylab
I have been reading Pinker's The Blank Slate and it mentions the naturalistic fallacy which the author recognizes as acknowledging something as being moral because it is natural.
"Things which which are a part of nature are moral" is a fallacy. One could argue literacy and vaccination are not "natural", and therefore immoral.

[Dylab]

Originally posted by Yahweh

"Things which which are a part of nature are moral" is a fallacy. One could argue literacy and vaccination are not "natural", and therefore immoral.

Just to make sure I made myseslf clear I identified the fallacy is saying "things which are a part of nature are moral" not that the point of the argument of identifying the falacy is to prove that.

Having said that I was wrong. I took only one instance of the argument. The naturalistic falacy proposed by G.E. Moore states something different. From The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/n/nfallacy.htm) "The naturalistic fallacy is a metaethical theory proposed by G.E. Moore (1873-1958) in Principia Ethica (1903) that the notion of moral goodness cannot be defined or identified with any property." Basically identifying morality with anything such as nature, pleasure, the will of god, nature, etc or any property would be under the falacy. I don't quite fully understand everything but it seems pretty interesting.

[calladus]

Originally posted by Igopogo

What then should be the basis of our ethical choices? I would suggest:

- prolonged survival for our species, (which in turn means respect for the webs of life that we are part of yet don't fully understand)
-systematic search for understanding of our universe, (and particularly life on Earth)
-long term sustainability based on wise choices from what we can learn about the system that gave us life.


While you are suggesting - I would add:

- Very long term sustainability based on learning to create new life sustaining systems off of Earth. (colonies in space or on other planets)

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm pretty nervous with all of humanities eggs in just one basket.

[Igopogo]

I agree, since we'd also learn alot about life here at the same time. I think attempts at creating isolated biospheres are interesting in that where they fail, they give hints as to what we don't yet understand about our environment. I also think that space exploration has given us an enormous boost to our knowledge of our environment.

[epepke]

I distrust morality in general. As far as I can tell, the most actual bad done by people in the world has done by people who have persuaded themselves that it has a higher purpose.

As for determining whether hunting is good or bad, this moral judgement is entirely, utterly, and obviously stupid. Should it be moral to hunt a spotted owl if you eat it? Should it be immoral to hunt the otherwise uncontrolled deer population in Michigan if you don't eat them?

Was it immoral for people to hunt baby seals? Is it immoral for the US Park Service to cull the seal population because they have grown out of control?

Screw morality. Instead think about what is good or bad. Unlike morality, it requires some hard thinking and appreciation of the consequences. Tough noogies.

[pupdog]

Of course what is natural must be moral. After all, natural medicines are all efficacious and have no side effects, so there must be morality involved.

A letter to the editor of the local paper the other day asserted that we should be thankful for hunters, because otherwise the human species would go extinct! I guess morality is involved in this argument as well. That letter was in response to another, "Hunting is Morally Wrong and Unnecessary", which I did not see.

Is it possible that some people make up "moral" arguments to support their positions? It does not appear that any critical thinking goes into many of these arguments.

[triadboy]

Originally posted by Dylab
...hunting is a natural way of subsistence...

Oscar Wilde on Fox Hunting:

The unbearable in full pursuit of the uneatable. :D