Question Why do so many equate 'natural' with 'good?' It seems to me as though there are loads of cases stating the very opposite. So is what is natural always what is good?

Accepted:
October 22, 2009

Comments

You are right and they are wrong. It is not.

On the other hand, we are part of the natural world so it is no bad thing for us to acknowledge this.

To answer your second question first, you are correct that what is natural is not always good (though of course we need to know what we mean by "natural" and "good"). For instance, if we mean by "natural" what humans have strong desires to do, presumably in part because of our evolutionary history, then it will be natural for humans to eat pretty much as much sugar and salt and fat as we can (in the environments in which we evolved, sugar, salt, and fat, all of which are crucial for survival, were scarce enough that there would be little selection pressure to limit consumption of them). But if by "good" we mean what will keep us healthy and alive, then in our current environment, our natural desires to eat so much sugar, salt, and fat are not good. What is natural is not good.

Similar arguments might be given for a variety of desires or behaviors, which humans plausibly have developed in part because of our (natural) selective history, and which we would not call good: promiscuity, racism, sexism, greed, aggression (especially between males and between "tribes), hierarchical social systems, etc. Of course, our selective history also likely endowed us with desires to be faithful to the parent of our children, to be generous (at least to some conspecifics, especially family), to control aggression, to limit inequities, etc.

The upshot is that we have lots of competing "natural" desires and traits, and our cultures and upbringing shape them in various ways, so getting us to desire and do what is good might require shaping what is natural in certain ways.

Now, why do so many equate 'natural' with 'good'? Good question. Perhaps some do it because, as I just pointed out, our good desires and traits are also part of our nature (everything about us is part of our nature!), so a lot of what is natural is good. A related reason is that people may have reason to think that what is unnatural is not good, if what is unnatural involves corruption of what is naturally good in us or the world.

Finally, some may make this move for religious reasons. God made nature. God is good. So, what is natural is good. (And what is unnatural must be bad because it is "against God".)

I don't take any of these reasons to be any good. (In philosophy, these sorts of questions sometimes gets discussed in terms of Hume's "is-ought gap" or the "naturalistic fallacy.")

Question Why do so many equate 'natural' with 'good?' It seems to me as though there are loads of cases stating the very opposite. So is what is natural always what is good? Accepted:October 22, 2009

Question Why do so many equate 'natural' with 'good?' It seems to me as though there are loads of cases stating the very opposite. So is what is natural always what is good?

Accepted:
October 22, 2009