Here’s a fun little quiz to see how you score on moral taboo.

Apparently, I’m a licentious hethen. I’m in the far lower left-hand corner of the grid. Pretty much what I expected. The mere fact that an act grosses me out or makes me unfcomfortable doesn’t necessarily mean it’s morally wrong. And just because it’s wrong doesn’t mean it should be made illegal. It isn’t until other people begin to get hurt against their will that I start to make moral judgments.

My results after the jump.

You see very little wrong in the actions depicted in these scenarios. However, to the extent that you do, it is a moot point how you might justify it. You don’t think an action can be morally wrong if it is entirely private and no one, not even the person doing the act, is harmed by it. Yet the actions described in these scenarios at least seem to be private like this and it was specified as clearly as possible that they didn’t involve harm. Possibly an argument could be made that the people undertaking these actions are harmed in some way by them. But you don’t think that an action can be morally wrong solely for the reason that it harms the person undertaking it. More significantly, when asked about each scenario, in no instance did you respond that harm had resulted. Consequently, it is a puzzle why you think that any of the actions depicted here are of questionable morality.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 9th, 2005 at 9:00 am by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.