Moralistic fallacy

The moralistic fallacy is a fallacy, in which, on the basis of the moral undesirability of a condition or behavior of its unnaturalness is claimed. The term was coined as a moralistic fallacy in 1978 by the biologist Bernard Davis ( 1916-1994 ). In the German -speaking world, the concept was used under the name of the moralistic fallacy of Norbert Bischof (1996).

The moralistic fallacy is often used to reject scientific research, theories or findings that are contrary to existing ethical standards.

It is in this fallacy to a ignoratio elenchi: Whether a state is, of course, that certain psychological or biological tendencies equivalent (about evolutionary psychology or behavioral biology ), is not influenced by the ethical value to which it is viewed, without further notice. It resembles the naturalistic fallacy is that he maintains a strong relationship between is and ought. While it is closed from being on the 'ought' in the naturalistic fallacy, one makes moralistic fallacy from If to Being. The conclusion does not lead to a formal contradiction, but is formally incomplete and requires strong additional assumptions about the relationship between morality and nature.

In folk psychology, the argument form is known even before Davis and Bishop. So she has found for example in Christian Morgenstern's poem The fact impossible (1910 ) as " that may not be what should not be" an expression.