The appeal to nature and casual fallacies appear in conversations and in many forms of writing on a daily basis. Robert Todd Carroll has written two pieces, Becoming a Critical Thinker and Skeptics Dictionary, which explain what the two ideas are. In short, the appeal to nature is a claim that all things that are natural are good and all things unnatural are bad. A casual fallacy is a belief that because one thing happens something else occurs as a result. These two ideas are present in three different articles, Natural Foodie: Making the vegan switch proved to be a win-win-win, The Bad Seed: The Health Risks of Genetically Modified Corn, and Moms to EPA: Recall Monsanto’s Roundup. These articles are connected by the altering of food and also
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He talks about their spontaneous commitment for sixty days and the immediate results of their new diet. The underlying claim in this article is, you will be healthier if you switch to a vegan diet. However, it cannot be said that the vegan diet is the one and only thing that caused the positive health effects. Jeff’s wife, Laura, claims that the diet “boosted her energy levels and left her feeling light rather than bloated after meals” (Avery Yale Kamila). There are too many factors that may play a role in how Laura feels energized. The family changed their diet from one that contained a lot of meat, hence Jeff “Calling himself a former meat-aholic” (Avery Yale Kamila), to a restrictive diet. It is also mentioned that they exercise but have been doing so right along. Therefore, this article written by Avery Yale Kamila contains a casual fallacy because, according to Carroll, “simply because one event precedes another does not mean that there is a causal relationship between the two events. To reason that one thing must be the cause of the other solely because it preceded the other is to commit the post hoc fallacy, a type of false cause reasoning.” Jeff is implying that because he switched to a vegan diet, he is …show more content…
Shetterly’s claim in her article is, genetically modified corn or any kind of product that comes from a GMO is bad because it is unnatural. She blames the alteration of the corn for her illnesses and defends her thinking when she says Amal Assa’ad (MD) has “magical thinking” (Shetterly). Assa’ad states, “'We're so afraid of chemicals because they are man-made, right? A lot of chemicals have helped us—a lot of medications are chemicals’” (Shetterly). Carroll, the author of Skeptics Dictionary and Critical Thinking, disagrees with Shetterly’s thinking because he says, “Just because something is natural does not mean that it is good, safe or healthy.” Therefore, the appeal to nature is apparent in Shetterly’s article. Her article also contains casual fallacies. When Shetterly eliminated anything that came from GMO corn from her diet, her symptoms which included “headaches, nausea, rashes, and fatigue” went away. Like Jeff, Shetterly had too many factors in her life to determine that eliminating GMO corn was the solution. All other factors, such as the antibiotics she took, would have to be ruled out to determine if her claim is true. After all, her symptoms may have abated because the “correlation may be due to chance or coincidence”
He talks about their spontaneous commitment for sixty days and the immediate results of their new diet. The underlying claim in this article is, you will be healthier if you switch to a vegan diet. However, it cannot be said that the vegan diet is the one and only thing that caused the positive health effects. Jeff’s wife, Laura, claims that the diet “boosted her energy levels and left her feeling light rather than bloated after meals” (Avery Yale Kamila). There are too many factors that may play a role in how Laura feels energized. The family changed their diet from one that contained a lot of meat, hence Jeff “Calling himself a former meat-aholic” (Avery Yale Kamila), to a restrictive diet. It is also mentioned that they exercise but have been doing so right along. Therefore, this article written by Avery Yale Kamila contains a casual fallacy because, according to Carroll, “simply because one event precedes another does not mean that there is a causal relationship between the two events. To reason that one thing must be the cause of the other solely because it preceded the other is to commit the post hoc fallacy, a type of false cause reasoning.” Jeff is implying that because he switched to a vegan diet, he is …show more content…
Shetterly’s claim in her article is, genetically modified corn or any kind of product that comes from a GMO is bad because it is unnatural. She blames the alteration of the corn for her illnesses and defends her thinking when she says Amal Assa’ad (MD) has “magical thinking” (Shetterly). Assa’ad states, “'We're so afraid of chemicals because they are man-made, right? A lot of chemicals have helped us—a lot of medications are chemicals’” (Shetterly). Carroll, the author of Skeptics Dictionary and Critical Thinking, disagrees with Shetterly’s thinking because he says, “Just because something is natural does not mean that it is good, safe or healthy.” Therefore, the appeal to nature is apparent in Shetterly’s article. Her article also contains casual fallacies. When Shetterly eliminated anything that came from GMO corn from her diet, her symptoms which included “headaches, nausea, rashes, and fatigue” went away. Like Jeff, Shetterly had too many factors in her life to determine that eliminating GMO corn was the solution. All other factors, such as the antibiotics she took, would have to be ruled out to determine if her claim is true. After all, her symptoms may have abated because the “correlation may be due to chance or coincidence”