Abstract
One popular reason for rejecting moral realism is the lack of a plausible epistemology that explains how we come to know moral facts. Recently, a number of philosophers have insisted that it is possible to have moral knowledge in a very straightforward way—by perception. However, there is a significant objection to the possibility of moral perception: it does not seem that we could have a perceptual experience that represents a moral property, but a necessary condition for coming to know that X is F by perception is the ability to have a perceptual experience that represents something as being F. Call this the ‘Representation Objection’ to moral perception. In this paper I argue that the Representation Objection to moral perception fails. Thus I offer a limited defense of moral perception.
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Notes
See McBrayer (2009).
One might be tempted to resist conflating all perception as with all perception de dicto (thanks to Peter Markie for pressing this point). For example, if I were to perceive of the man that he’s angry, this is an instance of de re perception, and yet it seems capable of generating knowledge since I am seeing the man as being angry. What is crucial is that perceptual knowledge requires an instance of perception that can be accurately described by a claim with at least one ‘perceives that’ clause (or any of the cognates of ‘perceive’). That’s what is necessary for perception to give rise to perceptual knowledge, and it doesn’t matter what label we give such perception.
The reason that perceptual knowledge requires perception de dicto (in the sense indicated above), is because perceptual knowledge is propositional, and perception de re is not propositional.
Of course, even a defender of the perceptual sense of ‘moral experience’ may invoke phenomenology as an essential feature of a perceptual experience or as an essential feature perceptual knowledge (though there are accounts of both that do not rely on phenomenology at all). For example, one might insist that it is impossible to perceive that the ball is round unless roundness has a certain look or feel to it. The distinction that I am drawing at present, however, is simply meant to distinguish views in which perception does the epistemic work in the account of moral knowledge verses cases in which it is the emotional reaction to what one perceives that does the epistemic work in the account of moral knowledge.
The exception is the disjunctivist camp. Philosophers such as McDowell (1994) who defend a disjunctive conception of perception think that there is no internal state that both perception and hallucination have in common because they think that perception cannot be analyzed into an internal mental state plus some external condition. The position is called disjunctivism because it holds that the only mental state in common to both perception and hallucination is the following disjunctive state: the state of either perceiving or hallucinating. For an argument against disjunctivism, see Huemer (2001, pp. 58–60).
Tye (1995) is explicit about this implication of his view on perceptual content:
The lesson of the problem of transparency is that phenomenology ain’t in the head. Just as you cannot read semantics out of syntax, so you cannot read phenomenology out of physiology…. Phenomenology is, in this way, externally based. So systems that are internally physically identical do not have to be phenomenally identical. (p. 151, emphasis Tye’s).
By ‘phenomenal content’, Tye means any representational content that is nonconceptual.
Brian Kierland offers the following objection. Suppose an objector concedes that (1) is false by allowing that it is in principle possible for an experience to represent high order properties. Still, he might object that as a matter of contingent fact, humans do not (or cannot) have perceptual experiences that represent high order properties. This weaker major premise is enough to support the conclusion that no human has (or can have) a moral perceptual experience. I certainly agree that this move is possible, but I fail to see a plausible defense for the weaker premise. If it is possible for high order properties to be represented in a perceptual experience, then why think that no high order property is ever represented in some human’s perceptual experience?
If one opts for this move, a natural question is the following: If a perceptual experience doesn’t represent that anything is the case, why is a perceptual experience a necessary condition for perceptual knowledge? There are a variety of responses to this sort of concern, but I’ll just trace one here. Suppose that what matters for knowledge is reliable belief. Then, if perceptual beliefs are sufficiently reliable, they will count as knowledge regardless of whether the perceptual experiences necessary for perception have representational content.
An objector may dig in his heels and insist that my belief that the car is a Ford is not a perceptual belief. Instead, she may insist, it is the result of a suppressed inference that combines my perceptual beliefs about the shape of the car with my background knowledge about what Fords look like. Three points are important to make here. First, it’s not obvious to me that we’re ever justified in claiming that a belief is the result of a suppressed inference. If by ‘supressed inference’ we mean something like ‘sub-conscious inference’, then how could we ever come to know that a belief is the result of such an inference? For this reason, I am skeptical of claims that beliefs result from suppressed inferences. Second, even if it is true that the belief is the result of a suppressed inference, this is not enough to show that the belief is non-perceptual. Perhaps most (or all) of our perceptual beliefs involve such suppressed inferences. Third, even if I grant that the belief that the car is a Ford is the result of a suppressed inference and that furthermore no perceptual belief is the result of a suppressed inference, there is still something importantly different about my belief that the car is a Ford when compared to other beliefs that are obviously the result of inference. Even if not perceptual, per se, the belief has a strong epistemic footing that is importantly connected to perception in a way that many of our beliefs are not. What this means is that my thesis is still important: if I can show that at least some moral beliefs are relevantly similar to my belief that the car is a Ford, then even though I have not shown that some moral beliefs are perceptual, I have shown that some moral beliefs have a unique and strong epistemic footing that is importantly connected to perception.
As a helpful rule of thumb, an appearance locution is metaphorical if it would be appropriate for someone lacking the relevant sense modality to assert the phrase in question. For example, a blind person could appropriately assert that it looks like Obama will win in November.
See Harman (1977, p. 5).
For a defense of this counterfactual, see Sturgeon (1988).
Suppose you find it plausible that there is some way that dangerous appears to you in each of these cases, or at least you find that there is a considerable overlap in the way that it appears to you in each of the cases. If this seems plausible, I suggest that it shall also seem plausible that there is a considerable overlap in the way certain wrong actions appear to you.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Jason Bernsten, Michael Hartsock, Robert N. Johnson, Mat Konieczka, Andrew Moon for many helpful conversations about the issues in this paper and to Brian Kierland, Peter Markie, and Matthew McGrath for painfully detailed comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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McBrayer, J.P. A limited defense of moral perception. Philos Stud 149, 305–320 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9363-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9363-0