The definist fallacy (sometimes called the Socratic fallacy, after
Socrates
Socrates (; ; –399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no te ...
)
[William J. Prior, "Plato and the 'Socratic Fallacy'", ''Phronesis'' 43(2) (1998), pp. 97–113.] is a
logical fallacy In philosophy, a formal fallacy, deductive fallacy, logical fallacy or non sequitur (; Latin for " tdoes not follow") is a pattern of reasoning rendered invalid by a flaw in its logical structure that can neatly be expressed in a standard logic syst ...
, identified by
William Frankena
William Klaas Frankena (June 21, 1908 – October 22, 1994) was an American moral philosopher. He was a member of the University of Michigan's department of philosophy for 41 years (1937–1978), and chair of the department for 14 years (1947†...
in 1939, that involves the definition of one property in terms of another.
Overview
The philosopher William Frankena first used the term ''definist fallacy'' in a paper published in the British
analytic philosophy journal ''
Mind'' in 1939.
In this article he generalized and critiqued
G. E. Moore
George Edward Moore (4 November 1873 – 24 October 1958) was an English philosopher, who with Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and earlier Gottlob Frege was among the founders of analytic philosophy. He and Russell led the turn from ideal ...
's
naturalistic fallacy
In philosophical ethics, the naturalistic fallacy is the claim that any reductive explanation of good, in terms of natural properties such as ''pleasant'' or ''desirable'', is false. The term was introduced by British philosopher G. E. Moore in ...
, which argued that ''good'' cannot be defined by natural properties, as a broader confusion caused by attempting to define a term using non-synonymous properties.
Frankena argued that ''naturalistic fallacy'' is a complete misnomer because it is neither limited to naturalistic properties nor necessarily a fallacy. On the first word (''naturalistic''), he noted that Moore rejected defining ''good'' in non-natural as well as natural terms.
On the second word (''fallacy''), Frankena rejected the idea that it represented an error in
reasoning – a fallacy as it is usually recognized – rather than an error in
semantics
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comp ...
.
In Moore's
open-question argument The open-question argument is a philosophical argument put forward by British philosopher G. E. Moore i§13of ''Principia Ethica'' (1903), to refute the equating of the property of goodness with some non-moral property, X, whether natural (e.g. ple ...
, because questions such as "Is that which is pleasurable good?" have no definitive answer, then pleasurable is not synonymous with good. Frankena rejected this argument as: the fact that there is always an open question, merely reflects the fact that it makes sense to ask whether two things that may be identical in fact are.
Thus, even if good ''were'' identical to pleasurable, it makes sense to ask whether it is; the answer may be "yes", but the question was legitimate. This seems to contradict Moore's view which accepts that sometimes alternative answers could be dismissed without argument, however Frankena objects that this would be committing the fallacy of
begging the question.
See also
*
List of fallacies
A fallacy is reasoning that is logically invalid, or that undermines the logical validity of an argument. All forms of human communication can contain fallacies.
Because of their variety, fallacies are challenging to classify. They can be classif ...
References
{{Reflist
Informal fallacies