Imagine you work at a Latex glove factory. One night, you type ‘Latex’ into Google: you’re searching for competitors’ products, but you find other things too. Some of what you find turns you on. But some of it you wish you could unsee: prior to the search, it was morally unthinkable.

It’s easy to underappreciate the importance of the morally unthinkable. Discussions of ethics tend to focus on matters of conscious choice: which moral rules to follow, or advice on how to approach moral dilemmas. But a hugely significant part of ethics concerns what is unthinkable. You might, for example, be strapped for cash, but robbing the neighbours is unlikely to be an option for you. That’s because, whenever you deliberate, you have already ruled out all kinds of unthinkable possibilities. It isn’t that you consider robbery only to dismiss it: the idea never even crosses your mind.

One of the main ways that virtues function is by silencing a whole range of unethical possibilities, to borrow a term from the philosopher John McDowell at the University of Pittsburgh. ‘Virtues’ can sound antiquated – stuffy and overly moralistic – but they play an indispensable role in everyday life. You simply don’t think certain thoughts – running a red light; pilfering a colleague’s purse; making a cruel joke – because you’re just not that kind of person.[…]

Source: https://aeon.co/ideas/if-anyone-can-see-the-morally-unthinkable-online-what-then?