If you need a “yellow △ blue △ red” decoder for my comments bracketed into Adler’s below, please use “is/fact △ ought △ value” or “being △ action △ quality” or “formal/material △ final/ought △ formal/final” (going around & around with Copilot on this last one until they cried Auntie). There are others… just ask.

Comments on the “Naturalistic Fallacy” by Mortimer J. Adler, Ph.D.

The refutation of naturalism in ethics rests on the truth of two propositions: (1) that there is at least one good to be sought entirely for its own sake [Maryann: He’s putting the good as one of many red values instead of a blue action/actualization of red value—but he’s yellow universalizing the red value because “for its own sake”/end] and not as a means to anything beyond itself; and (2) that there is at least one categorical ought that is self-evident. If these two propositions are true, then it is impossible to reduce all judgments of value or all ought statements to statements of fact. [Maryann: the reason you can’t “reduce” it to is (fact/being) is because it’s triadic… and is (fact/being is) only 1/3 the battle (if G.I. Joe gets to say 1/2, I get to say 1/3!).]

Among the philosophers who assert the truth of these two propositions and who, in so doing, also assert the relative or absolute autonomy of ethics, some charge the naturalists or empiricists in ethics with committing an error that has been misnamed “the naturalistic fallacy.” This has beclouded the issue by introducing irrelevant considerations; for the root error of the naturalists does not consist in committing the so-called naturalistic fallacy. Rather, it consists in failing to recognize that an end can be ultimate without being terminal – a failure that leads the naturalists to deny that there can be any end that is not also a means. [¡MARYANN! alpha/omega — first/final principle already fulfilled. This is about denying formal/final causes/quality. Edit: The situation is a little more embarrassing. // They think all end/why reduces to mean/how (describing … what exactly?)? Edit: I think he’s saying terminal as in consequent, versus timelessly teleological (ultimate). The reason they focus on means is they don’t understand eternal ends. // He’s saying naturalism can only deal in facts/is, so reduces away values/ends and oughts as if they are merely facts or are not actually real. He’s also saying the two-part counter-example to refute nihilism would be a good (value/end) that is not a means, and a categorically self-evident ought. So perhaps if by good, he means value/end, not ought, then he is not conflating oughts and values?]

It may be useful, nevertheless, to examine the so-called “naturalistic fallacy”; by correcting the mistake implicit in the formulation of it, we can clarify the meaning of “good” without attempting to define it. But, first, it is necessary to distinguish two forms of the “naturalistic fallacy,” the one pointed out by David Hume in the eighteenth century, the other by G. E. Moore at the beginning of this century.

The logical fallacy to which Hume called attention is formally similar to the violation of the rule governing considerations of modality in reasoning. It is logically invalid in reasoning to infer a necessary conclusion from premises that are contingent in their modality [Maryann: Is this going from blue example/actuality/action to yellow category/being…because no empty categories, or red possibility/quality/value to yellow necessity/being?…see Logic Venn for these/related questions] or to assign contingency to a conclusion that is inferred from premises that are necessary in their modality. It is similarly and just as obviously fallacious to draw an ought-conclusion from premises that consist entirely of is-statements; [Maryann: Is he thinking blue ought as red value or blue ought as blue imperative action aligned with yellow universalized red value?] for the difference in logical type between descriptive and normative [Maryann: Is he talking blue legislative norm without red &/or yellow, or red value norm w/o blue &/or yellow? Another way to put the question: Is he saying both Hume’s fork and guillotine are subalternation which commit the very commonly misunderstood and misrepresented existential fallacy? Sounds awfully the same as his conception of Moore’s “mistake,” though he says they are different, and that Hume’s is not a mistake. Problem is, both Hume & Adler call inductive justifications “facts” (actions/justifications/inductions), rather than reserving that status for is/being/truth (this is what makes sense of Hume discounting miracles due to their seeming improbability). It’s the “whole good” that is merely normative (not terminal/existential/inducted—EVEN in hindsight of a whole life) part. Adler puts oughts in values, rather than actions/particularizing (but the blue inductive/justified sphere is facts, rather than the yellow being/truth sphere, for him). It’s kind of funny when you juxtapose that against his stating the “ultimate without being terminal” thing above–how ya gonna demonstrate the correctness (see his bit on gold below) of an ultimate if there is no temporal/terminal demonstration?] propositions is as great as, if not greater than, the difference in modality between two descriptive propositions.

That is why I regard the logical mistake pointed out by Hume – the violation of the rule that an ought-statement cannot be validly inferred from premises that are is-statements-as an analogue or special form of the modal fallacy. I will have more to say later about this special fallacy but, in passing, it is worth remembering that Hume did not discover it. It was explicitly recognized in antiquity, and to my knowledge, no moral philosopher of note-certainly none prior to the eighteenth century-ever committed this error. None is in fact named by Hume.

I wish to deal now with the other form of the so-called “naturalistic fallacy” – the form to which attention has been called by Moore and which has been made the subject of so much discussion in the last sixty [ninety] -five years. Let me say, first of all, that it has no logical connection with the modal fallacy discussed by Hume, which is truly a logical fallacy, and that, in addition to not being a logical fallacy, it also has no special relevance to naturalism. If there is any error revealed in Moore’s discussion of attempts to define the good, it is the mistake that Moore himself makes in supposing that definitions are statements of identities [Maryann: See previous: “clarify the meaning of ‘good’ without attempting to define it”.]

No exception can be taken to Moore’s endorsement of Bishop Butler’s observation that “everything is what it is, and not another thing.” A is A; it is not non-A. But definitions, properly conceived, never violate this law of identity. To say, for example, that gold is a fusible metal is not to say that gold is non-gold, but merely to offer the defining properties of that which is gold.

If to define anything at all – the good or anything else – one had to violate the law of identity, then no definitions at all would be logically valid, and every term would be indefinable. [Maryann: Is he saying Moore’s mistake is in assuming that an analytic definition/description, one that is true by definition, cannot include statements of how things ought to behave (blue), or statements of value/function (red), simply because (according to someone like Moore) those do not describe something as true by definition? Is Adler saying… doesn’t that leave out the function/why and praxis/how included in what a thing is? rather than including why a thing functions, and how it operates. He says below the correctness of the definition is established via induction (demonstration, how)… pro tem. Seems like he is here affirming subalternation (in defiance of a common misrepresentation of the existential fallacy). How can a what/definition even be a thing without how and why (distinctly, as a unity)? Why does it (Moore’s mistake) feel like cherry picking them OUT of the definition—and why does it remind me of the “synthetic a priori“ Kantroversy, as well as the misunderstanding between those who accept Thomistic simplicity, and those who think it implies monism or modal collapse (assuming I even correctly understood the controversy there)? (My job is to clarify how that is or is not the same mistake Hume is making… if it is in fact a mistake, and what the actual mistake is… as concerns Hume’s fork/guillotine.)]

The question of the correctness in fact of a particular definition is, of course, another matter. While defining gold as a fusible metal does not violate the law of identity, that by itself does not assure us that fusibility is in fact a defining property of the metal gold. On the other hand, when that definition of gold is empirically arrived at and accepted in the light of the available evidence as factually correct, then it is no longer an open question whether or not gold is fusible. That question has been settled protem by the establishment of the definition. [Maryann: So if definitions are not triadic, then identity only belongs in yellow (if yellow is descriptive/deductive what, blue is prescriptive/inductive how, red is subscriptive/abductive why). But if identity (that you subscribe to who you are, and vice versa) is demonstrated via blue/induction, then Adler has a point. But what if Moore meant that the good cannot be defined on its own, but only in unity with the beautiful why/end, and the true being that grounds it? What if he alternatively meant you cannot fully capture it in a definition? Moore goes on to agree with that.]

I have gone this far into the logic of definitions in order to point out that Moore’s much vaunted “open-question argument,” far from calling attention to a logical fallacy or anything that has a bearing on the relation of facts to values [Maryann: the good is the how, the value is the why, neither of which are true without What/Who], was merely his cryptic and contorted way of trying to explain why he thought that the good is indefinable. Moore was correct in this contention, but this was hardly an original discovery on his part, as it is sometimes mistakenly supposed. Only massive ignorance of the theory of the good in the first twenty or twenty-two centuries of Western thought could have fostered that illusion. In addition, the argument by which Moore tried to show that the good is indefinable is itself based on a misunderstanding both of definitions and of indefinable terms. [Maryann: See previous: If there is any error revealed in Moore’s discussion of attempts to define the good, it is the mistake that Moore himself makes in supposing that definitions are statements of identities (Maryann: See previous: “clarify the meaning of ‘good’ without attempting to define it”.) So, indefinable here for Adler, if it isn’t drawing the same line as his understanding of Hume’s is-ought distinction, means you cannot fully capture/know the infinite?…This may have been true of Kant. Maybe too generous to pre-conversion Adler. I’m not going to show here whether or not Adler was correct in his conclusions about the mistake Moore was actually pointing out and whether or not it differed from Hume’s–and I will expand on whether or not Hume and Adler got that mistake right (Editorial note: In his 80s, Adler did become a Christian.)]

Plot twist: Adler prefers axioms to definitions. I haven’t finished reading the book.

***

Update: Many thanks to Alexa Tulk, Public Services Supervisor of The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center of University of Chicago Library. She helped me locate the source of the above quote, and also shared relevant material with me which was included in the pre-publishing research of its source. The source of the quote is Adler’s ”The Time of Our Lives” originally published through Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1970 (my first edition copy was reprinted in 2005 through Fordham, and reproduces the exact section I quote in chapter 10).

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