ASEBL Journal – Volume 13 Issue 1, January 201 8
ence of a sufficiently honed sense.
There is something clearly right about these claims, but they should not be understood
to imply that there is a genuine kind of moral perception. Though Levin may require a
perceptual capacity to manage his estate well, it need not be understood as a capacity
to perceive moral properties. Defenders of moral perception often fail to distinguish
carefully between moral perception and what I will call morally relevant perception.
Though certain perceptual capacities are no doubt relevant to good moral reasoning,
they do not amount to a kind of distinctively moral perception. Moreover, if there
were moral perception, the capacity to perceive morally relevant properties would be
much less important than it actually is.
There are two senses in which perception and perceptual capacities can be relevant for
moral thought and action. Both are found in the writings of Iris Murdoch and in many
of her admiring commentators. 3
The first sense involves the capacity to perceive the morally relevant non-moral fea-
tures of the world so that these features can enter into your deliberations. One must (1)
have the proper (morally relevant) non-moral concepts, (2) have the wherewithal to
notice when relevant non-moral features are present, (3) be disposed to attend to these
relevant non-moral features, (4) appreciate the relevance of these features and, (5) be
free of any biases, distortions, or distractions that might prevent those features from
entering into your deliberation in the proper way. 4 We might say that, in this sense,
perception matters because it provides the ingredients for moral thinking and delibera-
tion. Suppose, for instance, that you are riding a crowded train when a person gets on
who needs to sit down. If you lack the concept NEEDS TO SIT DOWN, or if, having
the concept, you lack the wherewithal to notice that this person needs to sit down or if,
though you notice you don’t really pay any attention to the fact that she needs to sit
down or if, though you pay attention you don’t appreciate the fact that her need to sit
down gives you a reason to offer your seat or if, appreciating that fact, you think that
your comfort is more important than her need, then you won’t be in a position to rea-
son well about what you ought to do. Not all of these steps to good deliberation are
properly called ‘perceptual.’ We wouldn’t, for instance, normally call familiarity with
a concept a perceptual capacity. But, as the example illustrates, morally sensitive per-
sons often just see what’s going on and then know what they ought to do.
The other sense in which perception is morally relevant is illustrated by Murdoch’s
case of the Mother-in-Law:
A mother, whom I shall call M, feels hostility to her daughter-in-law, whom I
shall call D. M finds D...unpolished and lacking in dignity and refinement. D
is inclined to be pert and familiar, insufficiently ceremonious, brusque, some-
times positively rude, always tiresomely juvenile...M feels that her son has
married beneath him. Let us assume...that the mother, who is a very ‘correct’
person, behaves beautifully to the girl throughout...Time passes...M tells her-
self: ‘I am old-fashioned and conventional. I may be prejudiced and narrow
minded. I may be snobbish. I am certainly jealous. Let me look again.’...D is
discovered to be not vulgar but refreshingly simple, not undignified but spon-
taneous, not noisy but gay; not tiresomely juvenile but delightfully youthful,
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