ASEBL Journal – Volume 13 Issue 1, January 201 8
such behavior isn’t valuable. It’s important not to see philosophic altruism and biolog-
ical altruism as competitor accounts of a single concept. If one did, then one couldn’t
avoid Price’s despair.
Likewise, signaling altruism doesn’t compete with philosophic or biologic altruism.
Keeping them separate is essential to asking certain normative questions. Are my rea-
sons to act altruistically (or to intend to do so) derived from my reasons to signal al-
truism? It’s also essential for asking certain biological questions: Is the biological
benefit of altruistic behavior (or intention) a function of the biological benefit of sig-
naling altruism? These are interesting and important questions raised by Goodman’s
paper and they shouldn’t be lost amid claims about the insufficiency of biological or
philosophical accounts of altruism.
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Moral Perception and Morally Relevant Perception
Jacob Sparks
You might bear witness to some injustice, but can you witness the injustice itself? At
first glance, it’s tempting to say “yes.” Sometimes we see things that provoke an im-
mediate judgement that some act is wrong just as we sometimes see things that pro-
voke the immediate judgement that e.g. the book is red or that our friend is angry. It
seems like we perceive the injustice just as we perceive the redness or the anger. Nat-
ural as that position is, some reflection might give us pause. Do we really see injus-
tice? Isn’t it more accurate to say that we see e.g. the innocent man being punished,
and then we infer that what is happening is unjust?
The dispute, between those who think that there is a genuine kind of moral perception
and those who think that no such kind of perception is possible, is the topic of this
paper. Many authors dismiss the idea of moral perception with little fanfare. As an
initial example, consider this passage from Sidgwick:
[T]hough probably all moral agents have experience of such particular intui-
tions [i.e. moral perceptions], and though they constitute a great part of the
moral phenomena of most minds, comparatively few are so thoroughly satis-
fied with them, as not to feel a need of some further moral knowledge even
from a strictly practical point of view...[S]erious doubts are aroused as to the
validity of each man’s particular moral judgements: and we are led to endeav-
our to set these doubts at rest by appealing to general rules...(Sidgwick, Meth-
ods of Ethics, Bk I, Chapter VIII, §3 p. 100)
There is a distinction implicit in Sidgwick’s remarks between immediate moral
judgements which might arise from perception and perceptual moral knowledge.
Sidgwick rightfully grants that sometimes we find ourselves with strong moral judge-
ments that appear to arise immediately, i.e. they do not seem to be the product of any
reasoning process. We simply see what’s going on and we think, “that’s wrong!” But
admitting that phenomenon does not mean, according to Sidgwick, that we have per-
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