ethics & morality · new to this edition
would you eat your cat?
on the acts that feel wrong while harming no one, and the reasons we invent afterwards.
Psychologists have a name for what may be about to happen to you: <em>moral dumbfounding</em>: the state of being sure an act is wrong while finding every reason you reach for crumbling in your hand. Below are some harmless taboos: acts that injure no one, that no one will ever know of. Mark your honest verdict on each, then see whether it squares with your theory of what makes anything wrong at all.
- 01
An act can only be morally wrong if it harms someone or something.
the principle, roughly, of John Stuart Mill.
- 02
A family’s cat is killed by a car. There is nothing wrong with them cooking and eating it, given no one else is harmed or ever knows.
- 03
There is nothing wrong with quietly cutting up an old national flag, in private, to use as cleaning rags.
- 04
A son promises his dying mother he will visit her grave weekly, then never does. Since she will never know and no one is hurt, he has done nothing wrong.
- 05
If an act provokes deep disgust but provably harms no one, that disgust is not, by itself, evidence that the act is wrong.
further reading
- the emotional dog and its rational tail original paper
- moral dumbfounding wikipedia