Błąd naturalistyczny - analiza i krytyka. Metaetyczne źródło sporu o naturalizowanie epistemologii
The Naturalistic Fallacy - The Metaethical Source of the Controversy over the Naturalization of Epistemology

Summary/Abstract: In this paper I analyze the phenomenon known as ‘the naturalistic fallacy’. The thesis for which I argue is that the decision not to commit the ‘naturalistic fallacy’ (as taken by anti-naturalists), or to acknowledging it as an inevitable process (as in the naturalist position), forms the basis for every theory concerning the justification of normative judgments. It is this choice that determines what solutions can be proposed within the various fields of philosophy to the problems pertaining to the sources of justificational reasons and the criteria for justified judgment. To justify this thesis I draw an analogy between metaethical and epistemological versions of this ‘fallacy’. In the first part of the paper, I point to the metaethical controversy surrounding the ‘naturalistic fallacy’. In the second part, I transpose the controversy over ‘the naturalistic fallacy’ from the sphere of metaethics into that epistemology. Firstly, I adopt and seek to justify a chosen epistemic quality that, I argue, may be regarded as analogous to the ethical quality ‘good’. In order to accomplish this, I set out to determine the relation between the truth and the justification of a judgment, arguing that this second category is, in fact, the more important one where epistemological analysis is concerned. Although the ‘naturalistic fallacy’ was initially formulated within metaethics, it might be transferred to every field of normative consideration.

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