Moral Perception and Singular Moral Judgment

Abstract

This chapter outlines a theory of moral perception, describes a structural analogy between perception and action, and indicates how perception can provide an objective basis for moral knowledge. It is shown to have a basis in the kinds of grounds that underlie the moral properties to which moral perception responds, such as the violence of a face-slapping. With this outline of a theory of moral perception in view, the chapter describes the presentational phenomenal character of moral perception. Prominent in this presentationality is the phenomenological integration between our moral sensibility and our non-moral perception of the various kinds of natural properties that ground moral properties. Moral perception is possible without moral judgment but commonly yields it. It is also possible without moral emotion but may arise from it in some cases and evoke it in others. Many perceptually grounded judgments are justified; many also express empirical moral knowledge.