
Yuck!
The Nature and Moral Significance of Disgust
Daniel Kelly(Author)
Bradford Books (Publisher)
Published on 11. January 2013
Book
Paperback/Softback
208 pages
978-0-262-51855-0 (ISBN)
Description
An exploration of the character and evolution of disgust and the role this emotion plays in our social and moral lives.People can be disgusted by the concrete and by the abstract-by an object they find physically repellent or by an ideology or value system they find morally abhorrent. Different things will disgust different people, depending on individual sensibilities or cultural backgrounds. In Yuck!, Daniel Kelly investigates the character and evolution of disgust, with an emphasis on understanding the role this emotion has come to play in our social and moral lives.Disgust has recently been riding a swell of scholarly attention, especially from those in the cognitive sciences and those in the humanities in the midst of the "affective turn." Kelly proposes a cognitive model that can accommodate what we now know about disgust. He offers a new account of the evolution of disgust that builds on the model and argues that expressions of disgust are part of a sophisticated but largely automatic signaling system that humans use to transmit information about what to avoid in the local environment. He shows that many of the puzzling features of moral repugnance tinged with disgust are by-products of the imperfect fit between a cognitive system that evolved to protect against poisons and parasites and the social and moral issues on which it has been brought to bear. Kelly's account of this emotion provides a powerful argument against invoking disgust in the service of moral justification.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Massachusetts
United States
Publishing group
MIT Press Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Interest Age: From 18 years
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
5 figures; 5 Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 11 mm
Weight
286 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-262-51855-0 (9780262518550)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
06/2011
Bradford Books
€7.37
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Person
Daniel Kelly is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University.
Content
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Toward a Functional Theory of Disgust
2 Poisons and Parasites: The Entanglement Thesis and the Evolution of Disgust
3 Disgust's Sentimental Signaling System: Expression, Recognition, and the Transmission of Cultural Information
4 Disgust and Moral Psychology: Tribal Instincts and the Co-opt Thesis
5 Disgust and Normative Ethics: The Irrelevance of Repugnance and Dangers of Moralization
Introduction
1 Toward a Functional Theory of Disgust
2 Poisons and Parasites: The Entanglement Thesis and the Evolution of Disgust
3 Disgust's Sentimental Signaling System: Expression, Recognition, and the Transmission of Cultural Information
4 Disgust and Moral Psychology: Tribal Instincts and the Co-opt Thesis
5 Disgust and Normative Ethics: The Irrelevance of Repugnance and Dangers of Moralization