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The Appeal to Nature Fallacy

September 5, 2018

fallacy, ignorance, LGBT, marketing, nature

Remember those commercials that talk about “only natural flavors” in a certain product? Caramels with natural flavors must be better than those with artificial ones, right? Well, not exactly. In actual fact, this designation only refers to the way a certain chemical is extracted. But it sure sounds better if you write “natural” on the package! Welcome to the Appeal to Nature Fallacy.

The Appeal to Nature Fallacy is… not really a fallacy, strictly speaking. It’s more of rhetorical trickery, rather, as the speaker tries to validate his or her argument by appealing to nature. One of the most notorious Appeal to Nature examples you might have seen is when someone homophobic attacks gay people claiming it’s “against nature”.

There are several different problems with this, so let’s see them one by one.

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Self Versus Self: My Unpublished Project

August 29, 2018

Fiction

book, experimental, self versus self, unpublished, writing

Last spring I was quite busy with a project which I didn’t specify. Among other articles, those days I wrote about poetry and ambition. Well, I can now reveal that these two combined to make the Self Versus Self project.

Self Versus Self is the name I’ve given to this latest literary work of mine. It consists of two volumes, one narrative poem (Self Versus) and one novel (Versus Self). Both works essentially narrate the same plot and can be read independently. However, they have been written as complementary to each other.

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Used Item Journeys: Musings of Interconnectivity

August 21, 2018

Experiencing

experience, idealism, meaning, musings

I once bought a Nikon EM film camera from eBay. I did it just for fun, out of curiosity, whatever you wanna call it. My plan was to try it for a while, then sell it again to someone. On its bottom there was a metal plate reading “Department of Corrections, Facility no:….” (I don’t remember the exact wording). This made me realize that used item journeys is a fascinating thing to ponder on.

Imagine, all the things your used lens has seen, all the experiences around it, all the places it’s been. Someone with a prosaic outlook on life might say “well, hang on! These are mere items, they don’t experience anything! And the people using them aren’t the ones journeying around.”

Although prosaic, this argument is valid. Indeed, used item journeys are not experienced by their users. They are not experienced by the items themselves either, since (as our prosaic imaginary friend mentioned) inanimate objects do not experience. So, what’s going on?

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