ASEBL Journal – Volume 13 Issue 1 , January 2018
and so on . And as I say , ex hypothesi , M ’ s outward behaviour , beautiful from the start , in no way alters . ( Murdoch 1999 p . 312-3 )
M doesn ’ t come to see new features of D that she had previously ignored . Rather , her accomplishment is that she has come to see D in a certain light , or with a loving gaze . It is similar to the case of someone who with some effort comes to see the duckrabbit as a duck . Nothing new is seen , but there is a new way of seeing . This kind of perception , according to Murdoch , is a morally relevant goal and is something worth aiming at , quite apart from how it affects our actions . Sometimes Murdoch even suggests that coming to see other people and the world at large correctly or lovingly is the only goal of the moral life and that notion of ‘ exercising the will to act rightly ’ is a philosopher ’ s fiction . But whether or not we accept this more extreme view , we can recognize that the mother-in-law has accomplished something morally significant and that many of us wish to accomplish similar things in our own lives .
What is important about these cases of morally relevant perception is that neither needs to be understood as the perception of moral properties . Both cases were specifically concerned with perception of certain non-moral properties , either as a precursor to moral deliberation and action or as a morally significant goal in itself . But many who defend the idea of moral perception will often cite the importance of these morally relevant kinds of perception as evidence that we can perceive moral properties . They mistakenly take the reasonable claim that perceptual capacities are relevant to moral thinking to support the much less reasonable claim that we can perceive moral properties themselves .
Take Lawrence Blum ’ s example of John and Joan , who are riding a train together . 5 When a lady carrying heavy bags enters the train , Joan but not John notices her discomfort . Since Joan is able to perceive a morally relevant feature of the situation ( the lady ’ s discomfort ), she is better able to make a decision about giving up her seat . She has a morally relevant perceptual capacity that John lacks . Blum puts this point by saying “ a morally significant aspect of situations facing John fails to be salient to him , and this is a defect in his character .” But , almost immediately , Blum reframes the point by saying that “[ John ] misses something of the moral reality confronting him .” In a sense , this is true . John doesn ’ t know that he ought to give up his seat . But the reason he doesn ’ t grasp this moral fact isn ’ t because he fails to see his obligation , it ’ s because he fails to see the woman ’ s distress . It ’ s not the moral reality that John is ‘ missing ,’ it ’ s the morally relevant reality . The perceptual capacity he lacks isn ’ t a capacity to see the propriety of giving up his seat ; it ’ s the capacity to see that the woman needs to sit down .
In another of Blum ’ s cases , Theresa , an administrator , is dealing with Julio , an employee , who has a painful disability that requires accommodation . Theresa fails to fully appreciate Julio ’ s disability and his pain and therefore fails to take the needed steps to accommodate him . Blum writes that “ Theresa is failing to perceive or acknowledge something morally significant .” One paragraph later , however , Blum characterizes the same shortcoming of Theresa ’ s as “ the failure to be in touch with part of the moral reality .” Again , we needn ’ t understand the situation as a failure of moral perception . There is available a perfectly good explanation of Theresa ’ s shortcoming that only
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