scholarly journals Moral Perception and the Reliability Challenge

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-73 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Faraci
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Perception ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Dead End ◽  
Reliability Challenge

Given a traditional intuitionist moral epistemology, it is notoriously difficult for moral realists to explain the reliability of our moral beliefs. This has led some to go looking for an alternative to intuitionism. Perception is an obvious contender. I previously argued that this is a dead end, that all moral perception is dependent on a priori moral knowledge. This suggests that perceptualism merely moves the bump in the rug where the reliability challenge is concerned. Preston Werner responds that my account rests on an overly intellectualized model of perception. In this paper, I argue that though Werner may well be correct, my arguments, properly extended, still suggest that perceptualism leaves realists in no better position than intuitionism when it comes to the reliability challenge.

Knowledge, belief, and moral psychology

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Mikhail
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Representations ◽  
Knowledge Attributions ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Strong Case ◽  
Synthetic A Priori ◽  
The Law

Abstract Phillips et al. make a strong case that knowledge representations should play a larger role in cognitive science. Their arguments are reinforced by comparable efforts to place moral knowledge, rather than moral beliefs, at the heart of a naturalistic moral psychology. Conscience, Kant's synthetic a priori, and knowledge attributions in the law all point in a similar direction.

Moral epistemology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Wedgwood
Keyword(s):  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Thinking ◽  
Moral Intuitions ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Factual Proposition ◽  
The Way

Epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. So moral epistemology is the study of what would be involved in knowing, or being justified in believing, moral propositions. Some discussions of moral epistemology interpret the category of ‘moral propositions’ broadly, to encompass all propositions that can be expressed with terms like ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘ought’. Other discussions have focused on a narrower category of moral propositions – such as propositions about what rights people have, or about what we owe to each other. According to so-called noncognitivists, one cannot strictly speaking know (or be justified in believing) a moral proposition in the same sense in which one can know (or be justified in believing) an ordinary factual proposition. Other philosophers defend a cognitivist position, according to which it is possible to know or be justified in believing moral propositions in the very same sense as factual propositions. If one does know any moral propositions, they must presumably be true; and the way in which one knows those moral truths must provide access to them. This has led to a debate about whether one could ever know moral truths if a realist conception of these truths – according to which moral truths are not in any interesting sense of our making – were correct. Many philosophers agree that one way of obtaining justified moral beliefs involves seeking ‘reflective equilibrium’ – that is, roughly, considering theories, and adjusting one’s judgments to make them as systematic and coherent as possible. According to some philosophers, however, seeking reflective equilibrium is not enough: justified moral beliefs need to be supported by moral ‘intuitions’. Some hold that such moral intuitions are a priori, akin to our intuitions of the self-evident truths of mathematics. Others hold that these intuitions are closely related to emotions or sentiments; some theorists claim that empirical studies of moral psychology strongly support this ‘sentimentalist’ interpretation. Finally, moral thinking seems different from other areas of thought in two respects. First, there is particularly widespread disagreement about moral questions; and one rarely responds to such moral disagreement by retreating to a state of uncertainty as one does on other questions. Secondly, one rarely defers to other people’s moral judgments in the way in which one defers to experts about ordinary factual questions. These two puzzling features of moral thinking seem to demand explanation – which is a further problem that moral epistemology has to solve.

Moral Perception without (Prior) Moral Knowledge

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-181 ◽  
Author(s):  
Preston J. Werner
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Background Knowledge ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Perception

Proponents of impure moral perception claim that, while there are perceptual moral experiences, these experiences epistemically depend on a priori moral knowledge. Proponents of pure moral perception claim that moral experiences can justify independently of substantive a priori moral knowledge. Some philosophers, most notably David Faraci (2015), have argued that the pure view is mistaken, since moral perception requires previous moral background knowledge, and such knowledge could not itself be perceptual. I defend pure moral perception against this objection. I consider two ways to understand the notion of “background knowledge” that is crucial to the objection. On a (stronger) reading, the claim that background knowledge is necessary for moral perception is likely false. On a second and weaker reading, the claim is true, but the background knowledge in question could be perceptual, and thus compatible with pure moral perception. Thus, the objection fails.

Moral Perception and Its Rivals

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah McGrath
Keyword(s):  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Perception ◽  
Attractive Alternative ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Relevant Class

Proponents of moral perception hold that some of our moral knowledge is perceptual knowledge. Discussions of whether moral perception is possible often seem to assume that there is some attractive alternative account of how we arrive at moral knowledge in those cases that are regarded as among the best candidates for cases of full-fledged moral perception. This chapter challenges that assumption by critically examining some alternative accounts of how we arrive at knowledge in the relevant class of cases, arguing that the more closely one examines these alternative accounts, the more implausible they seem as accounts of how we actually manage to arrive at moral knowledge. A modest version of moral perception is sketched, one that does not suffer from any similarly implausible commitments. There are some concluding reflections on why it matters whether some of our moral knowledge is perceptual.

Moral Perception: Causal, Phenomenological, and Epistemological Elements

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Belief ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Perception ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Do So

This chapter analyzes how perception is a kind of experiential information-bearing relation between the perceiver and the object perceived. It argues that even if moral properties are not themselves causal, they can be perceptible. But the dependence of moral perception on non-moral perception does not imply an inferential dependence of all moral belief or moral judgment on non-moral belief or judgment. This kind of grounding explains how a moral belief arising in perception can constitute perceptual knowledge and can do so on grounds that are publicly accessible and, though not a guarantee of it, a basis for ethical agreement. The chapter also shows how perceptual moral knowledge is connected not only with other moral knowledge but also with intuition and emotion.

Observation and Experience

2019 ◽  
pp. 106-150
Author(s):  
Sarah McGrath
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Moral Community ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Claims

This chapter explores how experience and observation contribute to moral knowledge. It defends the view that experience and observation can contribute to moral knowledge in any of the ways in which they contribute to our ordinary, non-moral knowledge of the world around us, including by empirically confirming and disconfirming moral claims. I argue that moral testimony has important implications for the possibility of confirming moral views by non-moral observations. I also argue that membership in a moral community, which puts one in a position to compare the moral opinions of others with one’s own, can contribute to moral knowledge not only by affording evidence for or against one’s opinions, but also by providing feedback that can serve to calibrate one’s capacity for judgment so that future exercises of that judgment are more likely to deliver knowledge. The chapter concludes with a discussion of a priori moral knowledge.

Traditional Moral Knowledge and Experience of the World

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedict Smith
Keyword(s):  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
John Mcdowell ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Demands

AbstractMacIntyre shares with others, such as John McDowell, a broad commitment in moral epistemology to the centrality of tradition and both regard forms of enculturation as conditions of moral knowledge. Although MacIntyre is critical of the thought that moral reasons are available only to those whose experience of the world is conceptually articulated, he is sympathetic to the idea that the development of subjectivity involves the capacity to appreciate external moral demands. This paper critically examines some aspects of MacIntyre’s account of how knowledge is related to tradition, and suggests ways in which the formation of moral subjectivity involves the ability to experience the world.

scholarly journals The Role of the Holy Will

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Callanan
Keyword(s):  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Practice ◽  
Moral Perfection ◽  
Immoral Action ◽  
The Ideal

AbstractIt is well known that Kant uses the notion of the holy will in the Groundwork so as to contrast it with the finite wills of human beings. It is less clear, however, what function this contrast is supposed to perform. I argue that one role of the holy will is to illustrate transcendental idealism’s account of the relation between moral knowledge and moral practice. The position is one intended to negotiate between ostensibly competing traditions. Kant uses the holy will as a way of endorsing the metaphysical picture of the scholastic tradition’s so-called ‘ethics of freedom’, whereby the ideal of moral perfection is conceived as the perfection of one’s power of freedom to the point where one is constitutively incapable of immoral action. This position is married however with the claim that the holy will’s inaccessibility to human cognition motivates a subject-oriented moral epistemology more usually associated with Enlightenment humanism. I conclude by claiming that the nuanced role for the holy will can be understood as part of Kant’s expansion of the value of religious faith [Glaube] to the domain of practical inquiry in general.

scholarly journals Cooperative Intuitionism

2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (281) ◽  
pp. 780-799
Author(s):  
Stephen Ingram
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Moral Inquiry ◽  
A Posteriori ◽  
Moral Intuitions ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
The Social

Abstract According to pluralistic intuitionist theories, some of our moral beliefs are non-inferentially justified, and these beliefs come in both an a priori and an a posteriori variety. In this paper, I present new support for this pluralistic form of intuitionism by examining the deeply social nature of moral inquiry. This is something that intuitionists have tended to neglect. It does play an important role in an intuitionist theory offered by Bengson, Cuneo, and Shafer-Landau, but whilst they invoke the social nature of moral inquiry in order to argue that ordinary moral intuitions are trustworthy, my argument focuses on what I will call the ‘frontiers’ of moral inquiry. I will show that inclusive and cooperative dialogue is necessary at moral inquiry's frontiers, and that intuitionists can expect such dialogue to result in both a priori and a posteriori moral beliefs.

Moral Perception, Aesthetic Perception, and Intuitive Judgment

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
Moral Intuition ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Perception ◽  
Aesthetic Perception ◽  
Aesthetic Object ◽  
Intuitive Judgment ◽  
Aesthetic Cognition

This chapter provides a comparison between moral and aesthetic knowledge and other aspects of the similarity between moral and aesthetic cognition. The connections between aesthetics and ethics are especially important for understanding moral perception and moral intuition. There is aesthetic perception, as opposed to mere perception of an aesthetic object, just as there is moral perception, as opposed to mere perception of a moral phenomenon. One may also find aesthetic disagreements that, even more than moral disagreements, challenge the view that normative domains have objective standards. The chapter shows how singular moral knowledge is like singular aesthetic knowledge in resting on a response to properties which ground the truth of the normative propositions known.

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