Thursday, 26 November 2009
Naturalistic Fallacy
To distinguish between “spontaneous order” regarded as “Great Society” and “spontaneous order” as “any blind self-generated mechanism evolving in accordance with the changes in the environment” becomes essential when it is necessary to avoid the naturalistic fallacy. The “Great Society” is a spontaneous order provided with several sub-systems which behave as spontaneous orders in themselves, such as the law, morals, language, monetary systems and so on. The present legal system of a given society, although spontaneously evolved, is not necessarily the only possible spontaneous legal system to rule that society.
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2 comments:
I do not understand the heading of this note. The naturalistic fallacy is the fallacy of supposing that one can define normative terms solely in natural terms. The note seems to have nothing to do with this.
Dear Sheldon,
I agree with you on the definition of naturalistic fallacy. In fact, I was aiming at those who employ the Hayekian spontaneous order theory to define normative concepts solely in natural terms. In this sense, I have found many opinions regarding spontaneously grown institutions as the best normative systems a society to follow, just because they are “natural”.
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