Moralistic fallacy

Now that I have given quite a lot of attention to morality in my last blogs (and not only in my last blogs). I think that it’s the right moment to treat the so-called “moralistic fallacy”, a fallacy that is related to wishful thinking. It is the inverse of the naturalistic fallacy, also called the is/ought fallacy.
There are two versions of the moralistic fallacy, a positive one and a negative one. The positive version says that it occurs when someone asserts “that something is a particular way because it should or ought to be that way.” (Foresman) We could also say: The moralistic fallacy occurs when someone asserts that the way things should be or ought to be is the way they naturally are. The negative version says that the moralistic fallacy occurs when someone asserts “that something cannot be a particular way because it should not or ought not to be that way.” (ibid.) Or, alternatively, what should not be or ought not to be in a particular way is not or will not be so. The fallacy implies that what is immoral is unnatural. The moralistic fallacy is closely related to wishful thinking, as said: The speaker wishes the world to be in a certain way – in this case in a certain moral way – so the world is in that way. The – moral – wish makes speaker blind to the facts.
A variation of the moralistic fallacy is the claim that certain behaviour is natural, since it is based on certain moral values, even if there is contradicting evidence; or a moral claim is simply used to justify a factual claim about the world. It can be found in legal reasoning, prudential reasoning, or reasoning regarding proper etiquette, aesthetics, humour, appropriate emotional responses, etc. I don’t like it to shave myself, so I do it only now and then. In the past, people often saw me as a “tramp” since a decent guy must be well-shaven. At the border, I was always checked. But since several years this has changed, for nowadays, looking unshaven (without having a real beard) is for men in fashion. Although I am still the same person, people see me now in a different way. A moral idea determined a social fact in the minds of those who had it; mistakenly. And, another example, who doesn’t like sometimes a distasteful joke? That the joke is distasteful doesn’t make it not funny just for that reason, although many people think it does.
More commonly, so Foresman, the moralistic fallacy occurs in everyday thinking when one assumes that what is right is what will be. For instance, this happens if a teacher thinks that the students will not cheat because it is not allowed. Or if someone thinks that people will vote because it is their moral obligation. However, it is not so that moral views cannot have practical consequences. They can. So it’s quite possible that the students don’t cheat, since it’s not allowed and therefore you simply don’t do it. Or that people vote, because they feel a moral obligation to do so. Also promises are often fulfilled because you must keep your promises. In other words, morality can affect how the world is and what the facts will be but it doesn’t necessarily do so.

Sources
- Galen Foresman, “Moralistic Fallacy”, in Robert Arp; Steven Barbone; Michael Bruce (eds.), Bad arguments. 100 of the most important fallacies in Western philosophy. Oxford, etc.: Wiley Blackwell, 2019; pp. 371-373.
- Moralistic Fallacy, in Wikipedia.