One of the readers of this site sent me a link to a very interesting article by Paul Bloom about our moral compass and disgust. Mr. Bloom makes a compelling argument against disgust-based morality.
It is understandable why people confuse their disgust with moral repulsion. The Dutch writer Gerard Reve remarked famously that poor people are stupid people, for if they were not stupid they would not have been poor.
Mr. Bloom writes: “What was wrong about Abu Ghraib had to do with the suffering of the prisoners and the sadism of those who caused this suffering. It would have been just as wrong if there were no visual record. It also would have been worse if the prisoners had been shot dead. But news of simple murder does not usually prompt disgust, and would never have led to the same sort of moral outrage. Even in cases like these, we are better off without the distraction of disgust.”