Comment of the Day

As much as I’d love to casually dismiss disgust-centered morality as kneejerk emotionalism, I can’t quite go there. While I disagree with the Republicanish examples you provide, there are plenty of other ethical beliefs I hold that have less to do with reason and more to do with gut feelings that I consider no less valid.

For example, reading Sam Harris’s book, The End of Faith, I was mostly with him until he started taking a pro-torture line as part of his atheism. He dismissed society’s instinctual disgust of it, and considered it a tactic reasonable societies could use on occasion. Count me out, if that’s reasonable. Aside from the questionable efficacy of torture, I cannot fathom people who do not have an innate revulsion of our government doing such things…

And incest is another example where we could devise scenarios where, say, sibling sexual intercourse would do minimal damage to society (with birth control among grown adults, etc), but few people would say our natural disgust at that is mere emotions that are old-fashioned.

I think sometimes you have to go with your gut, basically.

— Joseph Childers

On: Maggots, Urine, Feces, Ice Cream, and Republicans