Informal Fallacies: Reification and the Naturalistic Fallacy
Let's take for example the notion that;
What is good is rational.
It is seemingly, an innocuous statement, that on face value we all assume. At college, I think I can distill the above with the converse being the goal of my education, being what is rational is also good.
Now, under logical scrutiny, there have been two logical fallacies committed here. One is the fallacy of concreteness (reification), which gives rise to questions like, how does one define what is rational; If by action and behavior only, then we are left to assume that the naturalistic fallacy has been now committed.
Is there any way around the above?
What is good is rational.
It is seemingly, an innocuous statement, that on face value we all assume. At college, I think I can distill the above with the converse being the goal of my education, being what is rational is also good.
Now, under logical scrutiny, there have been two logical fallacies committed here. One is the fallacy of concreteness (reification), which gives rise to questions like, how does one define what is rational; If by action and behavior only, then we are left to assume that the naturalistic fallacy has been now committed.
Is there any way around the above?
Comments (25)
Rational people are not always good, nor are all rational minds, acts, etc. So, I'm not sure what you're aiming at here.
Reification (also known as concretism, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete, real event, or physical entity.[1] In other words, it is the error of treating as a "real thing" something which is not a real thing, but merely an idea. For example: if the phrase "holds another's affection", is taken literally, affection would be reified.
Another common manifestation is the confusion of a model with reality. Mathematical or simulation models may help understand a system or situation but real life always differs from the model.
Note that reification is generally accepted in literature and other forms of discourse where reified abstractions are understood to be intended metaphorically,[1] but the use of reification in logical arguments is usually regarded as a fallacy. For example, "Justice is blind; the blind cannot read printed laws; therefore, to print laws cannot serve justice." In rhetoric, it may be sometimes difficult to determine if reification was used correctly or incorrectly.
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In philosophical ethics, the term naturalistic fallacy was introduced by British philosopher G. E. Moore in his 1903 book Principia Ethica.[1] Moore argues it would be fallacious to explain that which is good reductively, in terms of natural properties such as pleasant or desirable.
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Does that help?
No, it's treating the sentence: What is good is rational, as an empirical or truth-apt sentence, that gives rise to the above.
Can you explain how this relates to the OP? Have I made some mistakes in the above?
Benefience, righteousness, virtue; there is a balance of all these involved in what's good.
Yes, some beneficent things are good.
No, not all beneficent things are good.
Defining good as benefience, abstracts good; fact.
It must need a new type of word, symbolic of it's wild nature.
Fixed,
So what are your thoughts about these thoughts? More why isn't bicycle isn't fruit or something else?
You ought take the word logical out of the OP, too.
I'm not seeing the reification. Wouldn't that be more like asking what shape The Good has? Or how much it weighs?
Done.
Quoting Banno
Well, the reification arises in a self-referential manner. Does that make better sense?
One would expose the naturalistic fallacy using an open question - suppose we have an act that we agree is rational. It is still open to us to ask if it is good. Hence being rational is not the very same as being good.
But one of us might Trump it out, brazenly claiming that no, because it is rational, it is indeed good.
OK, so isn't rationality an intrinsic/abstract feature of human nature? Therefore, trying to objectify it gives rise to reification, no?
That's an enlightenment notion, probably due to Kant. Too much of what is human is irrational for rationality to be considered intrinsic to humanity. But that's not to say that rationality is a virtue, perhaps to be striven towards.
One might be reifying it if one were to talk of it's being extracted, divided, given away.
But attempting to define what it is to be rational does not seem to me to be reification. Being rational is, among other things, following an argument to it's logical conclusion. No reification there.
Yes, well, in isolation the reification doesn't take place wheheras if one assumes that rationalist attitude, then yes?
There's no short supply of new games, good is increasing, but lone behold, the resource required for games to be produced is decreasing, and it may be required for humans to exist.
The universe is expanding, increasing in matter and energy, some people find this good. There is what's achievable good, and what's not, per sey, survive unlimited games.
Fuck it, this is my last attempt at good heat for a while. Sorry, it's a bit too much. It really annoys me how difficult this subject is.
Reification already assumes a dichotomy between physical and nonphysical... real and idea.
That dichotomy is inherently inadequate for taking proper account of that which is both. So...
Why is that?
When everything is broken down, categorized, and/or otherwise classified into one or the other... then by method and/or 'definition' alone... nothing is both.
And yet...
Many things are.
Sorry, can you explain this further?
Vicissitudes of nature, the unconscious, and behavior in institutional settings can cause reasoning, our practical problem-solving, to degenerate, and constantly has. Reasoning is a means to achieve human goals, a prerequisite of the biologically rare type of good we might call socialized actualization, but is not in unconditional control.
Makes me wonder if the concept "rationality" is a reification of "reasoning", maybe an idealization of some benefit that can nonetheless have the unwanted effect of inducing nihilism when inadequately contemplated.