Moralistic Fallacy
Inferring what is from what ought to be — that because something should be so, it is so.
- informal
The moralistic fallacy is the mirror image of the naturalistic fallacy: it reasons from a moral claim about how things ought to be to a factual claim about how they actually are. Because a state of affairs would be wrong or undesirable, it is assumed not to be the case.
Examples
- “Discrimination is wrong, so there simply can't be any real innate differences between groups.”
- “It would be unfair for talent to be inborn rather than earned, so success must come down to hard work alone.”
Why it works & how to counter
Persuasive because we want the world to match our values. Counter it by separating the moral question (what's right) from the empirical one (what's true) — wishing a fact away doesn't change it.