Abstract
Strohminger gives a lively and accurate critique of McGinn’s book (2011) but is somewhat inaccurate herself in describing the current theoretical state of the science on disgust. My comment primarily focuses on the issues I have with McGinn’s and Strohminger’s discussions and briefly offers a possible unifying account of the function and meaning of disgust.
Nina Strohminger’s review of Colin McGinn’s The Meaning of Disgust (2011) is a delightfully written scathing critique (Strohminger, 2014). McGinn’s book certainly does not live up to its title pretention of explaining the meaning of disgust, and should have been called “My Opinion on Disgust,” because that, as Strohminger points out, is all it is. There is no review or even acknowledgment of the prodigious amount of scientific research that has been conducted on disgust in the last 30 years. More seriously, McGinn makes frequent erroneous statements. He contends that “no auditory elicitor seems to elicit human disgust,” ignoring the prototypical revolting auditory elicitor—nails on a chalkboard. He claims that disgust reactions remain stable over one’s lifetime, when there is scientific data that the disgust response wanes with age (Fessler & Navarrete, 2005). Empirical evidence also clearly refutes his proclamation that “sagging old flesh smells exactly like young firm flesh” (Haze et al., 2001). In further unscientific dualist mode McGinn asserts that there is no mental disorder that can cause the mind to no longer exist. Yet, Alzheimer’s terrible destructiveness is just that. Moreover, his discussion of culture is devoid of global awareness. McGinn carries on about the repulsiveness of belches, farts, and excrement but overlooks the fact that in various cultures these bodily emanations are praised or ignored. Belching loudly is a gracious compliment to the host at the end of the meal in the Middle East. The Masai dress their hair in cow dung as a cosmetic treatment. Even the aroma of human feces is not a universal turnoff. The U.S. military has been searching for a stink bomb alternative to tear gas for years but has been unsuccessful to date, even with “US army issue latrine scent” as the candidate (see Herz, 2007, 2012). These are just some examples.
As Strohminger (2014) minces no words in saying, McGinn’s (2011) book is mainly about crap. However, there are a few bright spots. Some interesting speculations appear, such as that disgust evolved to rein in our reckless abandon, echoing Freud’s proposition that the function of disgust was to curb the “polymorphous sexuality of childhood” (Freud, 1962); that the farther from the mouth a shunned object is the more bearable it is to touch, though Rozin experimentally demonstrated this nearly twenty years ago (Rozin, Nemeroff, Horowitz, Gordon, & Voet, 1995); and how disgust lies at the root of religion, particularly the development of hygienic rules and rituals to deal with death. McGinn gives a nice rendition of Kolnai’s death-in-life theory, though he seems oblivious to the work of current disgust and terror management theory researchers, and despite his intent, he does not provide a coherent theory of the meaning of disgust. Connected to the theory point is where I take issue with Strohminger.
Strohminger (2014) asserts that the dominant theory of disgust is pathogen avoidance. Yet Valerie Curtis, the original and strongest advocate for pathogen avoidance as the explanation for disgust, complains bitterly that the Darwin–Rozin (Rozin, Haidt, & McCauley, 2008) avoidance of oral incorporation account is still the most accepted theory (Curtis, 2013). Which it is. Nor is it “dated” (Chapman, Kim, Susskind, & Anderson, 2009). Moreover, supporting the concept of a “behavioral extension of the immune system” is politically dangerous and socially offensive, as it provides a biological justification for racism, stigmatization of the obese, and a host of other ugly human behaviors.
Based on the disgust and emotion research I have reviewed, death is the worm at the core, and the function of disgust is to protect us from the slow and complex causes of death that besiege us through poison and illness. I believe that disgust evolved from fear as a death defense emotion to help us contend with the uniquely human predicament of having very long life spans and continuously needing to fend off microscopic predators. Thus, all bullshit aside, a scientific amalgamation of terror management, and avoidance of pathogens and oral incorporation is, in my opinion, the best meaning of disgust.