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Boston.com - Of Disgust and Morality

> This line of research makes the same fundamentally false assumption > as do people who believe kosher food is inherently more healthy. > "Well, not mixing milk and meat is healthier." "Well, not eating > bottom-dwelling seafood avoids infection risk." "Pork breeds > trichinosis." The moral code behind kashrut isn't based on health > reasons divined by Rabbis millenia in advance of modern medicine. > The Torah is the moral code behind it - many parts of it in seeming > opposition to human pragmatism. To say disgust is a cause of, not a > companion to moral judgment is akin to make a saddle into the > jockey. It quite misses the point.
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> Other arguments against: within evolutionary biology, it would be > difficult to argue for genetic encoding of disgust as wildly > different from Western to Eastern societies, especially in places > like Turkey. Secondly, since disgust is so easily conditioned by > associative Pavlovian reflex, it's a highly malleable and dynamic > experimental variable. While I think this line of research is myopic > and misdirected, it does ask some important questions about the > origins of morality in different societies and religions.
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> http://mobile.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/08/15/ewwwwwwwww/?pa...