Disgust as Heuristic

Springer Science and Business Media LLC - Tập 19 - Trang 679-693 - 2015
Robert William Fischer1
1Department of Philosophy, Texas State University, San Marcos, USA

Tóm tắt

Suppose that disgust can provide evidence of moral wrongdoing. What account of disgust might make sense of this? A recent and promising theory is the social contagion view, proposed by Alexandra Plakias. After criticizing both its descriptive and normative claims, I draw two conclusions. First, we should question the wisdom of drawing so straight a line from biological poisons and pathogens to social counterparts. Second, we don’t need to explain the evidential value of disgust by appealing to what the response tracks. These lessons point toward an alternative: namely, that disgust is a moral heuristic. On the heuristic view, disgust is a trigger for the subconscious use of a particular rule: < If x is disgusting, and we wouldn’t do x, then x is morally wrong. > I show how this view fits with a plausible hypothesis about the social function of disgust, and then apply it to Leon Kass’s famous use of repugnance to criticize cloning.

Tài liệu tham khảo

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