Why an Appeal to Nature is Not an Argument

Have you ever been in a discussion and/or debate with someone in which they argued that something is wrong because it is not natural or even that something is good because of that? For example, one might claim that a woman should not be able to be president because that is against the "natural order" of things. Perhaps you have also encountered food packages that say "all natural". What too many people that I have spoken to or heard in the media do not seem to understand is that not everything that is natural is good for us. As an example, hurricanes are natural, but that does not mean they are good. Likewise, computers and all other electronics are unnatural, given that they are built by us rather than by nature. Yet, very few people would argue that that means we should not be using those things. For this very reason, I try to steer clear of using the fact that something is supposedly natural as an excuse to do it or the fact that something is bad just because it is supposedly unnatural. Here, I will provide a few examples of the appeal to nature argument and why it is not an argument.

One relatively common example of the appeal to nature argument is found among many radical vegans. For example, this article from PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals) relies heavily on that fallacy. Essentially, the main idea of the article is that humans should not eat meat because we human are somehow only designed to eat plants. The way I see it is that even if they were correct about that, they have not provided hard evidence that meat and dairy in general are inherently bad for us. Basically all they have done is point out that we are built differently from omnivores. For instance, they mention the fact that the animals we evolved from (apes) apparently eat a mostly plant-based diet, which they use as evidence that it is unnatural for us humans to consume dairy. As shown in the second link below, certain apes, such as wild gorillas, have a diet that consists mainly of plants. Therefore, there is an element of truth to the PETA article. However, that does not prove that it is bad for humans to eat meat and other forms of dairy. The burden of proof is on them to use verifiable scientific data that shows what effects meat and dairy have on people and whether or not any of those effects are inherently bad. Otherwise, their primary argument is an appeal to nature, which does not prove whether something is good or bad.

https://www.peta.org/living/food/really-natural-truth-humans-eating-meat/

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100305-first-proof-gorillas-eat-monkeys-mammals-feces-dna/

My second example of an appeal to nature fallacy is found in this video from YouTube (see the link below) in which the YouTuber who made it says she does not believe in having a woman president because that somehow deviates from the "natural order" of husband first, wife second, and then child. While I have not encountered that many people who make an appeal to nature fallacy that is this extreme, the fact that it exists at all should not go unchallenged. First off, this YouTuber did not provide any scientific data or anything like that in this video to back her claim about a female president being against the "natural order". To me, that makes it all the more difficult to relate even at all to the point of view that she says she has on the issue in question. However, the main point is is that even if she provided that data to back her claim, it still would be unlikely to prove that a female president is inherently bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lha0DSSl-sE&t=365s

My third and last example of an appeal to nature fallacy is in the article in the link below. To be clear, I very much like and agree with most of it and I am in 100% in support of LGBT rights. The issue is that this article does not prove whether homosexuality is good or bad for people, so it is not the best thing to use in support of LGBT rights and certainly not against them. At best, it shows that it is probably not correct when people assert that homosexuality is unnatural. This article gives good and useful information, but it is not something that I would typically use in fighting for LGBT rights.

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26089486

The appeal to nature fallacy really needs to die out, at least when it comes to arguing whether something is good or bad. As for the reason people use it, that is not entire clear to me. I suspect it is at least in part due to the fact that for lots of us, hearing the word "nature" makes us think of pleasant things like forests, ocean, sunlight, etc. Accordingly, we tend to assume that because something is natural, it is a positive thing. There are many very nice things in nature, but as shown above, there are plenty of natural things that are bad for us and vise versa. It is therefore best to argue for or against something based on the effects it has on us instead of whether or not is a naturally occurring phenomenon.