From what can 'ought' be derived. The most compelling answer is this: ethics must be somehow based on an appreciation of human nature - on a sense of what a human being is or might be, and on what a human being might want to have or want to be. If that is naturalism, then naturalism is no fallacy. No one could seriously deny that ethics is responsive to such facts about human nature. We may just disagree about where to look for the most compelling facts about human nature -n novels, in religious texts, in psychological experiments, in biological or anthropological investigations. The fallacy is not naturalism but, rather, any simple-minded attempt to rush from facts to values. In other words, the fallacy is greedy reductionism of values to facts, rather than reductionism considered more circumspectly, as the attempt to unify our world-view so that out ethical principles don't clash irrationally with the way the world is.
More from Daniel C. Dennett
Experience teaches...that there is no such thing as a thought experiment so clearly presented that no philosopher can misinterpret it...
Permalink to quote #31 [I]n all mammalian species that have so far been carefully studied, the rate at which their members engage in the killing of conspecifics is several thousand t…
Permalink to quote #33 When comparing the time scales of genetic and cultural evolution, it is useful to bear in mind that we today - every one of us - can easily understand many ide…
Permalink to quote #30