ASEBL Journal – Volume 13 Issue 1, January 2018
that doesn’ t mean I can literally see the implication itself.
The authors we’ ve been discussing all think that an account of moral knowledge that leans heavily on a distinctively moral form of perception can better capture the experiences of mature and sensitive moral agents. What I have been trying to show is that we needn’ t posit a capacity to perceive moral properties to make sense of their examples. But there is one additional thing to notice about the aspirations of these authors. If it turned out that we could perceive moral properties, then our ability to perceive morally relevant properties would be much less important than it is normally taken to be. The central and least controversial way in which perception can be morally relevant is by supplying the materials we need to deliberate and act well. But, if we could just see the injustice of a certain action then we wouldn’ t need to see the features that make the action unjust. In the same way, if we could just see that it is going to rain tomorrow, we wouldn’ t need to be able to detect empirically all the things that are normally taken to be evidence for upcoming rain. The ability to perceive moral properties directly would provide a kind of shortcut that would make the perception of morally relevant properties extraneous.
This, I’ d like to suggest, is an unwelcome result. The relationship between moral properties and the non-moral properties on which they are consequent is unlike the relationship between, for instance, a property like‘ being angry’ and the microphysical properties on which it is consequent. If someone were to judge that you were angry without an awareness of the microphysical properties on which your anger is consequent, that wouldn’ t be at all problematic. But if someone were to judge that you were, for instance, cowardly without awareness of the non-moral properties on which that moral property is consequent that would be problematic even if we grant that they really do perceive your cowardliness directly.
Maybe the best way to see why it’ s problematic is to think about the ways the following conversation might resolve. Someone – maybe a romantic partner – says,“ You’ re the best.” And you ask,“ Why am I the best?” If they have an answer – you’ re so considerate, you supported me in this way, you exhibited this or that admirable quality, you did this excellent deed – then all is well and good. They know what they’ re talking about. But suppose they can’ t give a reason. They just see it. How does that feel?
Suppose Joan perceives that she ought to give up her seat on the train without noticing the elderly lady’ s need to sit down. Suppose Levin knows that he ought not hire men under bond, but he can’ t say what it is about hiring men under bond that makes it illadvised. Something isn’ t right. Sensitive moral thinkers should be sensitive to a broad array of non-moral facts, and they should be able to say why various actions are right and others wrong. But the thesis that we can perceive moral properties seems to controvert this fact. No doubt perception is morally relevant in a variety of important ways, but this does not mean we perceive moral properties.
Bibliography
Antonaccio, M.. Picturing the Human: The Moral Thought of Iris Murdoch. Oxford University Press. 2000.
Audi, Robert. Moral Perception. Princeton University Press, 2013.
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