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.
