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Appeal to Inherent Nature: Difference between revisions
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A subset of [[Appeal to Nature]]; if something is naturally predisposed to a certain act or state, it must be accepted. Snakes bite, bears maul, poisons kill, babies scream, sociopaths torture, and [[Those Wacky Nazis|Nazis]] [[Final Solution|commit genocide]]; but those are their natures, so we should not hold it against them. The fallacy is, of course, that the people making this claim are conflating inanimate objects, animals, and people. One of the three things I just listed has moral agency (i.e., the capacity to make value judgements based on an abstract idea of right vs. wrong and to be held accountable for those choices), and the other two don't. Guess which one.
Used as one of the [[Jerk Justifications]]. For when a man is appealing to his perverted nature, see [[I'm a Man, I Can't Help It]].
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▲== [[Comics]] ==
* In issue #3 of IDW's ''[[Godzilla]]: Kingdom of Monsters'' series, the [[No Celebrities Were Harmed]] version of [[Lady Gaga]] said that humanity shouldn't hold it against giant monsters for rampaging and destroying cities; it's just what they do, and it would be wrong to kill them for it.
== [[Film]] ==
* [[Natural Born Killers]] provides an alternate rendition of the below entry:
{{quote|Once upon a time, a woman was picking up firewood. She came upon a poisonous snake frozen in the snow. [[The Farmer and the Viper|She took the snake home and nursed it back to health. One day the snake bit her on the cheek.]] As she lay dying, she asked the snake, "Why have you done this to me?" And the snake answered, "Look, [[This Is for Emphasis, Bitch|bitch]], [[Genre Blindness|you knew]] I was a [[
== Folklore and Mythology ==
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== [[Literature]] ==
* In ''[[
{{quote|Oh, no doubt the man would suggest there were mitigating circumstances, that he had an unhappy childhood or was driven by Compulsive Well-Poisoning Disorder. But I have a compulsion to behead cowardly murderers.}}
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== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* One of the most universally despised yet virtually ubiquitous excuses for bad behavior in role-playing games is "I'm just doing what my character would do" (and its little brother "I'm just acting my [[Character Alignment|alignment]]"). As if once one has written "[[Chaotic Neutral]]" on his character sheet (through no fault of his own, presumably), it would be a sin against role-playing not to do something random, disruptive, and, if possible, [[Chaotic Stupid|stupid]] every now and then. Because that's what Chaotic Neutral people do! And it's not just players - more than one party has been betrayed and attacked by an [[Non-Player Character|NPC]] they were currently in the process of helping simply because the [[Game Master|GM]] noticed its race's alignment was [[
** The most infamous example would have to be the Paladin class in ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'', holy warriors who were required to be [[Lawful Good]]. So many players - many of whom were perfectly capable of playing non-paladin Lawful Good characters as reasonable individuals - felt that the ''only'' acceptable characterization for a paladin was the aggressively evangelistic [[Knight Templar]] whose only possible reaction to any situation was to demand [[The Evils of Free Will|everyone share his beliefs]] and kill anyone who didn't immediately fall in line that the phrase "[[Lawful Stupid]]" was coined to describe the class as a whole. The 4th Edition of D&D removed the alignment restriction, but many players familiar with earlier editions still act that way, because "that's just how paladins are."
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* Often used to imply that the person objecting to the behavior is prejudiced or overly sensitive.
* This is also a trope in certain religious/spiritual teachings, where it is assumed that value is subjective and not inherent to the thing in question.
* Often combined with [[Moral Myopia]]. "It is my tribe's natural custom to conquer and enslave and plunder therefore you are [[Fridge Logic|unjustly interfering]] with our [[Appeal to Tradition|culture."]] Of course it is [[Humans Are Warriors|''every'']] tribe's natural custom to conquer and enslave and plunder. And if a stronger tribe happens to have a hankering for expressing that desire by stopping you, who the heck are you to complain? They are [[Fridge Logic|just following their natural custom.]]
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[[Category:Logical Fallacies]]
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