Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Self-ownership and disgust: why compulsory body part redistribution gets under our skin

  • Published:
Philosophical Studies Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The self-ownership thesis asserts, roughly, that agents own their minds and bodies in the same way that they can own extra-personal property. One common strategy for defending the self-ownership thesis is to show that it accords with our intuitions about the wrongness of various acts involving the expropriation of body parts (e.g., Robert Nozick’s case of compulsory eyeball redistribution and Judith Jarvis Thomson’s Violinist). We challenge this line of defense. We argue that disgust explains our resistance to these sorts of cases and present results from an original psychological experiment in support of this hypothesis. We argue further that learning that disgust is responsible for pro-self-ownership intuitions should reduce our confidence in those intuitions. After considering and rejecting some prominent “debunking” arguments predicated on disgust’s evolutionary history, we provide alternative reasons for thinking that disgust is not a reliable source of moral judgments. Rejecting the reliability of disgust as a mechanism for producing moral beliefs coheres with our considered judgments about (1) the general kinds of considerations that are morally relevant and (2) a range of particular moral problems.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. See, e.g., Nozick (1974), Wheeler (1980), Vallentyne (1997), Mack (2002a, b) and Otsuka (2003). For objections, see, e.g., Cohen (1995) and Lippert-Rasmussen (2008).

  2. See Vallentyne et al. (2005, 203–204).

  3. See ibid; see also Nozick (1974, 172). See Otsuka (2003, 15) for a defense of less than full self-ownership.

  4. On the last point, see Vallentyne et al. (2005, 208).

  5. See Arthur (2009), Christman (1991, 40), Cohen (1995, 243–244) and Wolff (1991, 7–8).

  6. Ibid.

  7. McFall v. Shimp 10 Pa. D. & C. 3d 90 (1978).

  8. Ibid., 135.

  9. Ibid., 226.

  10. Harris (1975).

  11. Ibid., 86–87.

  12. Chadwick (1989), for example, notes that views that deny individuals ownership rights over their bodies (specifically their kidneys) are subject to the objection that they can, in principle, permit the survival lottery.

  13. Choe and Min (2011).

  14. Balzer and Jacobs (2011) as well as Smith et al. (2011) replicated the effect for gay marriage using an alternative, physiological measure of disgust.

  15. But see David and Olatunji (2011). Instead of using hypnosis, they used evaluative conditioning to imbue arbitrary words with disgust-eliciting potential. While this did lead participants to view subsequent moral transgressions as more disgusting, it did not lead them to view them as more morally wrong.

  16. When asked why they thought the ostensibly well-meaning student in this vignette acted wrongly for trying to make the discussion appealing to both students and faculty, participants made claims like, “It just seems like he’s up to something,” and “It just seems so weird and disgusting.” (Wheatley and Haidt 2005, 783).

  17. Ibid., 969.

  18. See Pizarro et al. (2011) for a brief discussion of the different ways moral judgment may be tied to disgust. Although disgust does not normally cause people to condemn an action they would have otherwise approved of, it does not follow that it never does so. As we suggest above, we take the fact that disgust can often increase condemnation to be good evidence that in cases where there are competing considerations at play (e.g., self-ownership and the prevention of bad outcomes), disgust can tilt the balance in favor of condemnation. We are grateful to an anonymous referee for raising this issue.

  19. Some of these effects were limited to participants who were identified as high in “Private Body Consciousness” (i.e., participants who regularly paid special attention to their internal states).

  20. Eskine et al. (2011) and Moretti and di Pellegrino (2010). Further studies have also found evidence for a causal connection between disgust and negative attitudes towards groups such as unfamiliar foreigners (Faulkner et al. 2004) and gay men (Inbar et al. 2012).

  21. We lack the space for a detailed treatment of how to individuate psychological kinds, but our argument rests on the assumption that two psychological states are likely to be of the same kind if they are triggered by relevantly similar stimuli and have relevantly similar cognitive and behavioral consequences.

  22. For a review of the relevant evidence, see Tybur et al. (2013) and Kelly (2011, chapter 2).

  23. Tybur et al. (2009).

  24. Park et al. (2012).

  25. DeBruine et al. (2010).

  26. In fact, Tybur et al. (2009, 117) explicitly argue that the most recent version of Haidt et al.’s (1994) Disgust Scale—Olatunji et al. (2007)’s “The Disgust Scale-R”—“largely reflects sensitivity to pathogen disgust” and that pathogen disgust is the “construct [that] has been measured using existing measures of disgust sensitivity.” The fourth study from Tybur et al. (2009) provides empirical support for these claims.

  27. Fessler and Haley (2006).

  28. Sherman et al. (2001).

  29. Ibid.

  30. Ibid.

  31. For ease of interpretation, we reverse coded the second dependent variable prior to running statistical analyses. This means that, for purposes of statistical testing, a rating of 7 represented full agreement with a statement of the form, “It was morally wrong for Kit’s doctor to take Marvin’s kidney without his consent in order to save Kit’s life,” and a rating of 1 represented full agreement with a statement of the form, “It was morally right for Kit’s doctor to take Marvin’s kidney without his consent in order to save Kit’s life.”

  32. Tybur et al. (2009).

  33. All three subscales of the Three Domain Disgust Scale demonstrated acceptable reliability; Cronbach’s alpha for pathogen disgust, sexual disgust, and moral disgust were .85, .86, and .93, respectively.

  34. Tybur et al. (2009).

  35. Adult participants (212 men, 304 women, 2 unidentified, M age = 31.7 years, age range: 18–80 years) were recruited online through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (www.mturk.com) for a survey on “Questions about Morality.” Of 518 participants, 515 reported living in the United States, two reported living in the United Kingdom, and one reported living in an unspecified country other than the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Germany, South Africa, or India. Participants were compensated $0.50 upon completion of the survey.

  36. With the exception of the Chi square tests reported in footnotes 43 and 44, all hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analysis. The full regression model included eleven predictor variables: one representing the effect of invasiveness (invasive vs. non-invasive), two representing the effect of item stolen (kidney, blood, or breast milk), two representing the interaction of invasiveness with item stolen, three representing people’s disgust sensitivity scores in each of the three domains (pathogen, sexual, and moral), and three representing the interaction of each of the three disgust sensitivity scores with invasiveness. The effects of item stolen and the interaction of item stolen with invasiveness were obtained by examining the change in explained variance due to removing the dummy variables associated with each effect from the full model. The standardized regression weights reported for each of the other predictors are those associated with the variables in the full model. Categorical variables were coded using unweighted effects coding.

  37. χ2 (1, N = 518) = 49.97, p < .001.

  38. The invasiveness of the self-ownership violation also had an effect on how frequently participants commended the self-ownership violation (i.e., how frequently their rating landed on the “right” side of the scale), χ2 (1, N = 518) = 52.67, p < .001. While only 25.0 % of participants assigned to the invasive conditions commended the self-ownership violation, 56.4 % of participants assigned to the non-invasive conditions commended it. The 7.9 % of participants in the invasive conditions and 18.8 % of participants in the non-invasive conditions whose rating landed on the midpoint of the scale are naturally interpreted as having believed that the theft was permissible but not necessarily right.

  39. β = 0.339, t(506) = 8.65, p < .001. Where scores closer to 1 reflect greater commendation and scores closer to 7 reflect greater condemnation, the covariate-adjusted mean in the invasive conditions was 5.13 (SE = 0.12), while the covariate-adjusted mean in the non-invasive conditions was 3.65 (SE = 0.12).

  40. F(2, 506) = 33.88, p < .001. The two dummy variables associated with item stolen were recoded using dummy coding to allow for pairwise comparisons. Pairwise comparisons revealed that participants believed stealing a kidney (M adj. = 5.22, SE = 0.15) was worse than stealing blood (M adj. = 4.44, SE = 0.15), p < .001, and that stealing blood was worse than stealing breast milk (M adj. = 3.52, SE = 0.14), p < .001.

  41. F(2, 506) = .037, p = .964.

  42. β = 0.005, t(506) = 0.12, p = .903.

  43. In other words, the main effect of invasiveness was qualified by an interaction with pathogen disgust sensitivity, β = 0.095, t(506) = 2.121, p = .034. Simple slopes analyses (Aiken and West 1991) revealed that pathogen disgust sensitivity interacted with invasiveness such that invasiveness had a greater effect among those who were high (+1 SD) in pathogen disgust sensitivity, β = 0.434, p < .001, than among those who were low (−1 SD) in disgust sensitivity, β = 0.243, p < .001.

  44. β = −0.018, t(506) = −0.37, p = .715.

  45. β = −0.029, t(506) = −0.60, p = .550.

  46. β = 0.132, t(506) = 3.07, p = .002.

  47. β = −0.061, t(506) = −1.41, p = .159.

  48. 71.8 % of participants in the invasive/blood condition judged it wrong to take the blood, and 49.4 % of participants in the invasive/breast milk condition judged it wrong to take the breast milk.

  49. Even if one alleges that the loss of a body part or the extra sleep induced by the drug is interference in itself, note that Marvin and his counterparts are drugged and lose their body parts in both the invasive and non-invasive cases.

  50. It’s not clear if Cohen himself thinks that hostility to interference can completely explain our intuitions. However, he does put it forth as an important explanation and our results suggest that, at a minimum, his account needs to be supplemented with ours.

  51. Ibid., 97.

  52. Ibid., 98–99.

  53. Ibid., 174–175.

  54. See Street (2006) and Kahane (2011).

  55. Kelly (2011).

  56. Plakias (2013, 6). Berker (2009, 320). Plakias attributes this kind of debunking argument to Daniel Kelly. Berker finds a similar style of argument in the work of Josh Greene and Peter Singer.

  57. One might worry that, since Horberg et al. pooled the latter two items with two items involving sex, people’s greater condemnation of this group of acts is primarily attributable to people’s greater condemnation of the two sexual items rather than the two non-sexual, morally neutral items. Yet item analyses do not support this claim. In fact, some of the most reliable effects of disgust were found for the non-sexual items. Horberg, personal communication.

  58. See Mill (1991, chapter 4).

References

  • Aiken, L. S., & West, S. G. (1991). Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interactions. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  • Arthur, J. (2009). World hunger and moral obligation. In S. Cahn (Ed.), Exploring ethics. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Balzer, A., & Jacobs, C. M. (2011). Gender and physiological effects in connecting disgust to political preferences. Social Science Quarterly, 92(5), 1297–1313.

    Google Scholar 

  • Berker, S. (2009). The normative insignificance of neuroscience. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 37, 293–329.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chadwick, R. (1989). The market for bodily parts: Kant and duties to oneself. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 6, 129–140.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Choe, S. Y., & Min, K.-H. (2011). Who makes utilitarian judgments? The influences of emotions on utilitarian judgments. Judgment and Decision Making, 6(7), 580–592.

    Google Scholar 

  • Choma, B. L., Hodson, G., & Costello, K. (2012). intergroup disgust sensitivity as a predictor of Islamophobia: The modulating effect of fear. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48, 499–506.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Christman, J. (1991). Self-ownership and property rights. Political Theory, 19, 28–46.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, G. A. (1995). Self-ownership, freedom, and equality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • David, B., & Olatunji, B. O. (2011). The effect of disgust conditioning and disgust sensitivity on appraisals of moral transgressions. Personality and Individual Differences, 50, 1142–1146.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • DeBruine, L. M., Jones, B. C., Tybur, J. M., Lieberman, D., & Griskevicius, V. (2010). Women’s preferences for masculinity in male faces are predicted by pathogen disgust, but not by moral or sexual disgust. Evolution and Human Behavior, 31, 69–74.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eskine, K. J., Kacinik, N. A., & Prinz, J. J. (2011). A bad taste in the mouth: Gustatory disgust influences moral judgment. Psychological Science, 22(3), 295–299.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Faulkner, J., Schaller, M., Park, J. H., & Duncan, L. A. (2004). Evolved disease-avoidance mechanisms and contemporary xenophobic attitudes. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 7(4), 333–353.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fessler, D. M. T., & Haley, K. J. (2006). Guarding the perimeter: The outside–inside dichotomy in disgust and bodily experience. Cognition and Emotion, 20(1), 3–19.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Fried, B. (2004). Left-libertarianism: A review essay. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 32, 66–92.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Haidt, J., McCauley, C., & Rozin, P. (1994). Individual differences in sensitivity to disgust: A scale sampling seven domains of disgust elicitors. Personality and Individual Differences, 16, 701–713.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harris, J. (1975). The survival lottery. Philosophy, 50, 81–87.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hodson, G., & Costello, K. (2007). Interpersonal disgust, ideological orientations, and dehumanization as predictors of intergroup attitudes. Psychological Science, 18, 691–698.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Horberg, E. J., Oveis, C., Keltner, D., & Cohen, A. B. (2009). Disgust and the moralization of purity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97(6), 963–976.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Inbar, Y., Pizarro, D. A., & Bloom, P. (2009). Conservatives are more easily disgusted than liberals. Cognition and Emotion, 23, 714–725.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Inbar, Y., Pizarro, D. A., & Bloom, P. (2012). Disgusting smells cause decreased liking of gay men. Emotion, 12(1), 23–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Jones, A., & Fitness, J. (2008). Moral hypervigilance: the influence of disgust sensitivity in the moral domain. Emotion, 8(5), 613–627.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kahane, G. (2011). Evolutionary debunking arguments. Noûs, 45, 103–125.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kelly, D. (2011). Yuck! The nature and moral significance of disgust. Cambridge: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lieberman, D. L, Tybur, J. M., & Latner, J. D. (2012). Disgust sensitivity, obesity stigma, and gender: Contamination psychology predicts weight bias for women, not men. Obesity , 20(9), 1803–1814.

  • Lippert-Rasmussen, K. (2008). Against self-ownership: There are no fact-insensitive ownership rights over one’s body. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 36(1), 86–118.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mack, E. (2002a). Self-ownership, marxism, and egalitarianism: Part I. Challenges to historical entitlement. Politics, Philosophy, and Economics, 1, 119–146.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mack, E. (2002b). Self-ownership, marxism, and egalitarianism: Part II. Challenges to the self-ownership thesis. Politics, Philosophy, and Economics, 1, 237–276.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mill, J. S. (1991). On liberty and other essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Moretti, L., & di Pellegrino, G. (2010). Disgust selectively modulates reciprocal fairness in economic interactions. Emotion, 10(2), 169–180.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nozick, R. (1974). Anarchy, state, and utopia. New York: Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nussbaum, M. (2004). Hiding from humanity: Disgust, shame, and the law. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Olatunji, B. O., Williams, N. L., Tolin, D. F., Sawchuk, C. N., Abramowitz, J. S., Lohr, J. M., & Elwood, L. (2007). The Disgust Scale: Item analysis, factor structure, and suggestions for refinement. Psychological Assessment, 19(3), 281–297.

  • Otsuka, M. (1998). Self-ownership and equality: A Lockean reconciliation. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 27, 65–92.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Otsuka, M. (2003). Libertarianism without inequality. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Park, J. H., van Leeuwen, F., & Stephen, I. D. (2012). Homeliness is in the disgust sensitivity of the beholder: Relatively unattractive faces appear especially unattractive to individuals higher in pathogen disgust. Evolution and Human Behavior, 33(5), 569–577.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pizarro, D. A., Inbar, Y., & Helion, C. (2011). On disgust and moral judgment. Emotion Review, 3(3), 267–268.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Plakias, A. (2013). The good and the gross. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 16, 261–278.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schnall, S., Haidt, J., Core, G. L., & Jordan, A. H. (2008). Disgust as embodied moral judgment. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(8), 1096–1109.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sherman, N. C., Sherman, M. F., Smith, R. J., & Rickert-Wilbur, P. (2001). Disgust sensitivity and attitudes toward organ donation among African-American college students. Psychological Reports, 89, 11–23.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith, K. B., Oxley, D., Hibbing, M. V., Alford, J. R., & Hibbing, J. R. (2011). Disgust sensitivity and the neurophysiology of left–right political orientations. PLoS ONE, 6(10), e25552.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Steiner, H. (2000). Original rights and just redistribution. In P. Vallentyne & H. Steiner (Eds.), Left Libertarianism and its critics: The contemporary debate (pp. 74–121). New York: Palgrave Publishers Ltd.

    Google Scholar 

  • Street, S. (2006). A Darwinian dilemma for realist theories of value. Philosophical Studies, 127, 109–166.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Terrizzi, J., Shook, N., & Ventis, L. (2010). Disgust: A predictor of social conservatism and prejudicial attitudes toward homosexuals. Personality and Individual Differences, 49, 587–592.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Thomson, J. J. (1971). A defense of abortion. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 1, 47–66.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thomson, J. J. (1990). The realm of rights. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tybur, J. M., Lieberman, D., & Griskevicius, V. (2009). Microbes, mating, and morality: Individual differences in three functional domains of disgust. Personality Processes and Individual Differences, 97(1), 103–122.

    Google Scholar 

  • Tybur, J. M., Lieberman, D., Kurzan, R., & DeScioli, P. (2013). Disgust: Evolved function and structure. Psychological Review, 120(1), 65–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vallentyne, P. (1997). Self-ownership and equality: Brute luck, gifts, universal domination, and leximin. Ethics, 107, 321–343.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Vallentyne, P., Steiner, H., & Otsuka, M. (2005). Why left-libertarianism is not incoherent, indeterminate, or irrelevant: A reply to fried. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 33, 201–222.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wheatley, T., & Haidt, J. (2005). Hypnotically induced disgust makes moral judgments more severe. Psychological Science, 16, 780–784.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wheeler, S. (1980). Natural property rights as body rights. Noûs, 16, 171–193.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wolff, J. (1991). Robert Nozick: Property, justice, and the minimal state. Cambridge: Polity Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

For their helpful comments and suggestions on drafts of this paper, we owe thanks to Andrew R. A. Conway, Joshua Gert, Bill Glod, Chris Tucker, and an anonymous referee for this journal.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Philosophy, College of William & Mary, P.O. Box 8795, Williamsburg, VA, 23187-8795, USA

    Christopher Freiman

  2. Department of Philosophy, Princeton University, 1879 Hall, Room 212, Princeton, NJ, 08544, USA

    Adam Lerner

Authors
  1. Christopher Freiman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Adam Lerner
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Christopher Freiman.

Additional information

The authors wish to note that the order of authorship was determined alphabetically and that the authors’ contributions to the article were equal.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Freiman, C., Lerner, A. Self-ownership and disgust: why compulsory body part redistribution gets under our skin. Philos Stud 172, 3167–3190 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0463-8

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0463-8

Keywords

Search

Navigation