Moral Disgust In Daniel Kelly's Yuck !

When it comes to our emotions, how strong is a feeling of disgust? Is it strong enough to influence our considered moral judgments or is it just an untrustworthy emotion? In Chapter 5 of the book, Yuck!, the author, Daniel Kelly, addresses this question and defends the skeptical view of moral disgust against a moral disgust advocate’s view. Moral disgust advocates believe that disgust should influence our considered moral judgments, but moral disgust skeptics say it should not. By discussing the standard dispute between advocates and skeptics, I will explain Kelly’s account on the nature of disgust, and how he uses the Entanglement and Co-opt thesis to debunk the views held by disgust advocates. The standard dispute between advocates and skeptics arises at the nature of disgust. Disgust advocates think that this emotion is well suited to guide our evaluations of activities and social practices, and that it also has a type of moral authority. Since they believe it has moral authority, advocates believe this emotion should be respected and given proper considerations when it comes to the deliberations of moral assessments. One theory moral disgust advocates follow, the Deep Wisdom Theory, interprets disgust as an accustomed emotion that provides insight on the “naturalness” and …show more content…
This “less common form of disgust advocacy” is the belief that you could consistently say one is disgusted by certain activities, beliefs, or people because they are genuinely problematic. For example, some people could view someone who is racist as disgusting, and that could be seen as morally appropriate because of the powerful effects on judgment and motivation that it has. Kelly criticizes this view by saying even if a disgust-infused moral judgment is justified, the E&C view still provides reasoning to be suspicious of the type of influence disgust can