Abstract

In this paper I home in on an ethical phenomenon that is powerfully elucidated by means of enactive resources but that has, to my knowledge, not yet been explicitly addressed in the literature. The phenomenon in question concerns what I will term the paradox of moral perception, which, to be clear, does not refer to a logical but to a phenomenological-practical paradoxicality. Specifically, I have in mind the seemingly contradictory phenomenon that perceiving persons as moral subjects is at once incredibly easy and incredibly difficult; it is something we do nearly effortlessly and successfully all the time without giving it much thought and it is something that often requires effort and that we fail at all the time (also often without giving it much thought). As I will argue, enactivism offers distinctive resources for explaining the paradoxical nature of moral perception. These resources, moreover, bring out two important dimensions of ethical life that are frequently overlooked in contemporary ethical theory: namely the embodied and socio-technical environment-embedded dimensions of moral perception and moral visibility. As I make my argument, I will be connecting enactivism with insights from David Hume’s and Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy as well as insights from the field of Epistemic Injustice. As such, I aim to situate enactivism within the larger theoretical ethical landscape; showing connections with existing ethical theories and identifying some of the ways in which enactivism offers unique contributions to our understanding of ethical life. While doing so, I will furthermore introduce two forms of moral misperception: particular moral misperception and categorial moral misperception.

Highlights

  • In this paper I home in on an ethical phenomenon that is powerfully elucidated by means of enactive resources but that has, to my knowledge, not yet been explicitly addressed in the literature

  • 1 Delft University of Technology, Jaffalaan 5, 2628 BX Delft, The Netherlands persons as moral subjects is at once incredibly easy and incredibly difficult; it is something we do nearly effortlessly and successfully all the time without giving it much thought and it is something that often requires effort and that we fail at all the time

  • What I will be arguing towards the end of this paper, is that our moral perception of others is quietly shaped by implicit embodied interaction norms and the norms and values entrenched into the sociotechnical structures that we are embedded in

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Summary

Introduction

In this paper I home in on an ethical phenomenon that is powerfully elucidated by means of enactive resources but that has, to my knowledge, not yet been explicitly addressed in the literature. In making this perceptual distinction I am implicitly acknowledging my fellow commuters as the sorts of beings whose sense of bodily space matters in a way that directly bears on my actions It is within the midst of our infinitely rich, contextually varying ways of interacting with others that we perceive them, with varying degrees of success, as beings of a certain kind—namely as minded intentional affective beings who occupy their own lived viewpoint onto a shared world and who afford (and forecloses) particular forms of treatment and response. As I first want to bring out in some more detail, moral perception operates in a seemingly automatic effortless manner, carving out a shared social environment in which we often appropriately engage with the expressive bodies of other people

The Effortlessness of Seeing People as Moral Subjects
Particular Moral Misperception
Categorial Moral Misperception
Moral Misperception: the Case of Autism
The Paradox of Moral Perception
The Role of Embodiment in Our Experience of Others as Moral Subjects
The Role of Embeddedness in Perceiving Others as Moral Subjects
Conclusion
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