printer friendly, larger print version Appeal to nature is a simplified type of naturalistic fallacy in argument form.
An appeal to nature fallacy consists of a claim that something is good or right
because it is natural, or that something is bad or wrong because it is unnatural. "The natural world is characterized by competition; animals struggle against each other for ownership of limited natural resources. Capitalism, the competitive struggle for ownership of capital, is simply an inevitable part of human nature. It's how the natural world works." Another form of appeal to nature is to argue that because human beings are
products of the natural world, we must mimic behavior seen in the natural world,
and that to do otherwise is 'unnatural':
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