I don't really understand this article. What is the point of an empirical approach to taboo. I was a student of philosophy for years, and ethics is essentially a top-down way of finding the exact things he's looking for. Whether it be Kant's categorical imperative or Singer's expanding circle, it seems to me this taboo chasing is missing the bigger picture of finding a justifiable ethical framework, and then everything he's asking about falls out simply, and easily.
You're right, this article is missing the bigger picture, but I don't think that was ever its target. It's simple, accessible, and piques peoples interest into something much bigger. I don't see it as an attempt to directly contribute to any specific field.
But it's just plane incorrect. It conflates ethics with aesthetics.
>What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people.
It may appear that morality behaves like fashion, but it's doesn't, or at least it shouldn't. The key ingredient here is that in fashion, there is no wrong, only taste. Thus, you can pull back the curtain on any would-be wizard trying to force you to conform.
In ethics, on the other hand, screaming a bunch of hurtful crap at people, just because you're "not supposed to do that" isn't cocksure cleverness. It's wrong. It hurts people. There are good, justifiable, reasons why you shouldn't say them.
Do we have taboos we shouldn't have? Sure, but if we are going to talk about them, they should be within a moral framework, not in some empirical mess of hey-that-shouldn't-be-that-way.
