Table Of Content

Yuck! Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology Kim Sterelny and Robert A. Wilson, editors Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution, Susan Oyama, Paul E. Griffiths, and Russell D. Gray, editors, 2000 Coherence in Thought and Action, Paul Thagard, 2000 The New Phrenology: The Limits of Localizing Cognitive Processes in the Brain, William R. Uttal, 2001 Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered, Bruce H. Weber and David J. Depew, editors, 2003 Seeing and Visualizing: It’s Not What You Think, Zenon W. Pylyshyn, 2003 Organisms and Artifacts: Design in Nature and Elsewhere, Tim Lewens, 2004 The Mind Incarnate, Lawrence A. Shapiro, 2004 Molecular Models of Life: Philosophical Papers on Molecular Biology, Sahotra Sarkar, 2004 Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life, Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, 2005 The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce, 2006 Evolutionary Psychology as Maladapted Psychology, Robert C. Richardson, 2007 Describing Inner Experience? Proponent Meets Skeptic, Russell T. Hurlburt and Eric Schwitzgebel, 2007 The Native Mind and the Cultural Construction of Nature, Scott Atran and Douglas Medin, 2008 Color Ontology and Color Science, Jonathan Cohen and Mohan Matthen, editors, 2010 The Extended Mind, Richard Menary, editor, 2010 Yuck! The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust, Daniel Kelly, 2011 Yuck! The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust Daniel Kelly A Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. For information about special quantity discounts, please email special_sales@mit- press.mit.edu This book was set in Stone Sans and Stone Serif by the MIT Press. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kelly, Daniel R. (Daniel Ryan) Yuck! : the nature and moral significance of disgust / Daniel Kelly. p. cm.—(Life and mind: philosophical issues in biology and psychology) “A Bradford Book.” Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-01558-5 (hbk. : alk. paper) 1. Aversion. 2. Emotions. I. Title. BF575.A886K45 2011 152.4—dc22 2010053625 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Mike, Lynn, and Erin Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 Toward a Functional Theory of Disgust 11 2 Poisons and Parasites: The Entanglement Thesis and the Evolution of Disgust 43 3 Disgust’s Sentimental Signaling System: Expression, Recognition, and the Transmission of Cultural Information 61 4 Disgust and Moral Psychology: Tribal Instincts and the Co-opt Thesis 101 5 Disgust and Normative Ethics: The Irrelevance of Repugnance and Dangers of Moralization 137 Notes 153 References 165 Index 189 Acknowledgments If memory serves, this book, and the dissertation that it grew out of, was sparked by an eye-opening seminar on biological and cultural explanations of human behavior I attended while in graduate school, a great conference on moral psychology in the summer of 2004 at Dartmouth College, and a number of conversations with my advisor, Steve Stich, at least one of which occurred at a Chinatown restaurant over a meal made up of dishes like blood tofu and duck tongue soup, which he was clearly enjoying, and which I was unsuccessfully trying to not be disgusted by. From there, the project unfolded slowly and in stages, and I have benefited along the way from the help and encouragement of many people. My biggest debt is to Steve, whose professional guidance and support have been invaluable in navigating the early stages of a career in academia, whose vision of what philosophy is and can be has helped shape my own, and who, by virtue of this, has perhaps unknowingly provided reassurance that a life in academic philosophy can be both invigorating and worth- while. Many thanks also to the members of the Moral Psychology Research Group; the exposure to so many perspectives, the stream of opportunities, and the intellectual companionship and camaraderie have been, and I am sure will continue to be, fantastic. I am also thankful to everyone who has given me many useful sorts of feedback on this project, either in conversa- tion or by commenting on earlier written drafts. Those whom I can remem- ber include Anne Barnhill, Damon Centola, Christine Clavien, John Doris, Luc Faucher, Geoff Georgi, Alvin Goldman, Matt Guschwan, Colin Jager, Edouard Machery, Ron Mallon, Brian McLaughlin, Shaun Nichols, Jene- fer Robinson, Ted Sider, and Eric Wesselman, as well as Tom Stone, Philip Laughlin, and two anonymous reviewers at the MIT Press. Suggestions and criticisms on talks based on this material have also been extremely helpful, and my gratitude goes out to the members of the philosophy departments at Illinois Wesleyan University, Rice University, the University of Houston,