ASEBL Journal – Volume 13 Issue 1, January 2018
Werner, in making the case that Norma’ s experiential state involves the representation of badness, writes: Norma’ s experiential state meets three conditions that we would standardly count as sufficient for a state’ s representing some property F. First... Norma has developed a disposition to be in this particular experiential state which more or less reliably tracks badness. Second, and relatedly, Norma’ s relevantly associated phenomenology is counterfactually correlated with badness( or at least a particular type of badness) in her local environment. Finally, Norma is disposed to form moral beliefs based on experiential states of this kind... It would appear then that we have some good preliminary reasons in favor [ of the perception of moral properties ] as the best explanation of the contrast in question.( Werner 2014 p. 10)
But those three conditions are not sufficient for Norma’ s experiential state to count as representing a moral property. I might get a certain feeling in my leg whenever the pressure drops and rain is likely. I might have a disposition to be in this particular experiential state that tracks rain-tomorrow, such a state might be counterfactually correlated with rain-tomorrow, and I might be disposed to form beliefs about raintomorrow on the basis of similar experiential states. But that doesn’ t show that I’ m perceiving the property rain-tomorrow. That would be to confuse the perception of properties that are relevant for my judgement about rain-tomorrow with my perception of rain-tomorrow itself. Similarly, Werner is here confusing the perception of morally relevant properties with the perception of moral properties themselves.
Later, in considering whether or not a difference in the perception of non-moral properties( in this case being-a-cat-in-pain) can best explain the difference between Norma and Pathos, Werner writes: The problem with this explanation is that there is no reason to suppose that Pathos fails to perceive the property of being-a-cat-in-pain if we already suppose that Norma does. And this is what would be required to generate a phenomenal contrast. As noted above, eedis are not impaired in their ability to perceive the pain or suffering of others. Nor are they impaired in their ability to perceive any other non-moral properties. Since eedis are not impaired in their ability to perceive most non-moral properties, the explanation given with respect to being-a-cat-in-pain will extend to other alternative explanations of this third sort.( Werner 2014 p. 17)
The issue here is that Werner fails to recognize the more subtle features of morally relevant perception that we listed at the beginning of this section. There is reason to suppose that being-a-cat-in-pain fails to enter into Pathos’ thinking in the way we would hope, either because he fails to attend to that feature of the scenario, or because he fails to recognize the moral relevance of that property, or because his thinking is distorted in some other way. That’ s all consistent with Pathos being able to see that the cat is in pain. If we fully appreciate how perception can be morally relevant, we needn’ t assume that it’ s a difference in moral perception proper that explains the phenomenal contrast between Normal and Pathos.
As a third and final example of this pattern of argument, consider this passage from
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