Moral Perception

A special issue of Philosophies (ISSN 2409-9287). This special issue belongs to the section "Virtues".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 April 2023) | Viewed by 10501

Special Issue Editor

Department of Philosophy, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
Interests: ethics; epistemology; emotions; dreams

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Recent years have seen renewed philosophical attention and research on the topic of Moral Perception. On one broad understanding, moral perceptions are perceptions of moral properties, e.g. perceiving the wrongness of an action, a person’s goodness, the injustice of a distribution, etc. Among those who think that there are moral perceptions, substantive disagreement concerns how to characterize their nature more precisely. Are moral perceptions simply psychologically immediate moral judgments? Are they instead emotional experiences? Sensory experiences with moral content? Intellectual perceptions? Or even a sui generis kind of perception? Cross cutting these are questions concerning the scope of moral perception (which moral properties are and are not perceivable) as well as the mechanisms by which it is produced.

Related to debates about the nature of moral perception are those concerning its epistemology. Are moral perceptions a source, or even an instance, of immediate moral knowledge? Do they play a special epistemic role? Are moral perceptions naturalistically respectable? What are the differences and similarities between moral perceptions and other putative sources of moral knowledge such as reflection or testimony? Further related questions concern the connection between moral perception and morality more generally. Are there certain kinds of normative or metaethical view that are incompatible with moral perception, or with it playing a particular kind of epistemic role? Does compatibility with moral perception increase the plausibility of an ethical view?

Interest in Moral Perception extends even more broadly than these questions. For instance, some might understand moral perception as a kind of sensitivity to features that are morally salient rather than a perception of moral properties. Such sensitivity may play a crucial role in virtue. Another kind of moral perception might be a perception which is itself morally assessable as good, bad, or as criticisable or commendable. Finally, it is plausible that insights into moral perception—however it is understood—may be gained from consideration of the similarities and differences with other kinds of perception such as aesthetic and religious perception.

This Special Issue on Moral Perception aims to make progress with respect to at least some of these (and related) issues. We therefore invite original research articles on, though not limited to, any of the above questions. We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Robert Cowan
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Philosophies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • ethics
  • perception
  • moral perception
  • emotion
  • intuition
  • moral epistemology
  • virtue
  • moral metaphysics
  • aesthetic perception
  • religious perception

Published Papers (8 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

20 pages, 306 KiB  
Article
The Non-Arbitrary Link between Feeling and Value: A Psychosemantic Challenge for the Perceptual Theory of Emotion
by Brian Scott Ballard
Philosophies 2024, 9(2), 38; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies9020038 - 19 Mar 2024
Viewed by 403
Abstract
This essay raises a challenge for the perceptual theory of emotion. According to the perceptual theory, emotions are perceptual states that represent values. But if emotions represent values, something should explain why. In virtue of what do emotions represent the values they do? [...] Read more.
This essay raises a challenge for the perceptual theory of emotion. According to the perceptual theory, emotions are perceptual states that represent values. But if emotions represent values, something should explain why. In virtue of what do emotions represent the values they do? A psychosemantics would answer this, and that’s what the perceptual theorist owes us. To date, however, the only perceptual theorist to attempt a psychosemantics for emotion is Jesse Prinz. And Prinz’s theory, I argue, faces an important difficulty: It makes the pairing of any given emotion with its respective value entirely arbitrary. But that’s a problem. It seems—and this is a major contention of this essay—that an emotion, in virtue of how it feels, bears a natural or non-arbitrary link to the value it represents. And this datum makes it all the more difficult to provide a viable psychosemantics for the evaluative content of emotion. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Moral Perception)
15 pages, 280 KiB  
Article
The Receptive Theory: A New Theory of Emotions
by Christine Tappolet
Philosophies 2023, 8(6), 117; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies8060117 - 08 Dec 2023
Viewed by 1481
Abstract
Cognitive Theories of emotions have enjoyed great popularity in recent times. Allegedly, the so-called Perceptual Theory constitutes the most attractive version of this approach. However, the Perceptual Theory has come under increasing pressure. There are at least two ways to deal with the [...] Read more.
Cognitive Theories of emotions have enjoyed great popularity in recent times. Allegedly, the so-called Perceptual Theory constitutes the most attractive version of this approach. However, the Perceptual Theory has come under increasing pressure. There are at least two ways to deal with the barrage of objections, which have been mounted against the Perceptual Theory. One is to argue that the objections work only if one assumes an overly narrow conception of what perception consists in. On a better and more liberal understanding of perception, the objections lose their force. The other is to stress that the differences between emotions and sensory perceptions can be explained by focusing on a new analogy. As I will argue, emotions have interesting similarities with magnitude representations, such as the representation of distance. Such representations are plausibly thought to be analog and non-conceptual, but by contrast to sensory perceptions, such as colour perceptions, they do not lie at the sensory periphery. This new analogy makes room for a novel and attractive theory of emotions, the Receptive Theory, which allows for a positive and epistemologically fruitful characterization of emotions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Moral Perception)
10 pages, 267 KiB  
Article
What Attentional Moral Perception Cannot Do but Emotions Can
by James Hutton
Philosophies 2023, 8(6), 106; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies8060106 - 11 Nov 2023
Viewed by 1201
Abstract
Jonna Vance and Preston Werner argue that humans’ mechanisms of perceptual attention tend to be sensitive to morally relevant properties. They dub this tendency “Attentional Moral Perception” (AMP) and argue that it can play all the explanatory roles that some theorists have hoped [...] Read more.
Jonna Vance and Preston Werner argue that humans’ mechanisms of perceptual attention tend to be sensitive to morally relevant properties. They dub this tendency “Attentional Moral Perception” (AMP) and argue that it can play all the explanatory roles that some theorists have hoped moral perception can play. In this article, I argue that, although AMP can indeed play some important explanatory roles, there are certain crucial things that AMP cannot do. Firstly, many theorists appeal to moral perception to explain how moral knowledge is possible. I argue that AMP cannot put an agent in a position to acquire moral knowledge unless it is supplemented with some other capacity for becoming aware of moral properties. Secondly, theorists appeal to moral perception to explain “moral conversions”, i.e., cases in which an experience leads an agent to form a moral belief that conflicts with her pre-existing moral beliefs. I argue that AMP cannot explain this either. Due to these shortcomings, theorists should turn to emotions for a powerful and psychologically realistic account of virtuous agents’ sensitivity to the moral landscape. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Moral Perception)
13 pages, 217 KiB  
Article
The Sophisticated and Naive View of Moral Experience
by Evgenia Mylonaki
Philosophies 2023, 8(4), 72; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies8040072 - 08 Aug 2023
Viewed by 1125
Abstract
In this paper, I draw a contrast between two ways of posing the question of moral experience: the episodic and the contemplative. On the first, the episodic outlook, the question of moral experience is the question of specifying the workings of a capacity [...] Read more.
In this paper, I draw a contrast between two ways of posing the question of moral experience: the episodic and the contemplative. On the first, the episodic outlook, the question of moral experience is the question of specifying the workings of a capacity (or set of capacities) whose exercise may ground claims of moral knowledge. On the contemplative outlook, on the other hand, the question of understanding moral experience is the question of articulating a standpoint: the moral standpoint. On this view, philosophical reflection on moral experience aims to shed light on the human experiences that paradigmatically exemplify and, thus, best reveal the moral standpoint. In the tradition of contemplative accounts, I propose that some of the human experiences that paradigmatically exemplify and reveal the moral standpoint are experiences of “moral growth and change”. Finally, I argue that in “moral growth and change”, one is in view of the world as what is at stake. This leads to a different sense in which moral experience grounds knowledge claims. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Moral Perception)
11 pages, 226 KiB  
Article
Value Feelings: A Defense
by Hichem Naar
Philosophies 2023, 8(4), 69; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies8040069 - 26 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1271
Abstract
The goal of this paper is to provide an initial defense of a neglected epistemology of value according to which a fundamental mode of access to evaluative facts and properties is constituted by a distinctive kind of feeling, sometimes called ‘value feeling’. The [...] Read more.
The goal of this paper is to provide an initial defense of a neglected epistemology of value according to which a fundamental mode of access to evaluative facts and properties is constituted by a distinctive kind of feeling, sometimes called ‘value feeling’. The paper defends the appeal to value feelings against some objections that have been leveled against it, objections intended to show that it is a nonstarter. The paper argues that these objections can be met and that the view that there are such value feelings constitutes a reasonable hypothesis. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Moral Perception)
13 pages, 284 KiB  
Article
Perception, Self, and Zen: On Iris Murdoch and the Taming of Simone Weil
by Silvia Caprioglio Panizza
Philosophies 2023, 8(4), 64; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies8040064 - 20 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1734
Abstract
How do we see the world aright? This question is central to Iris Murdoch’s philosophy as well as to that of her great source of inspiration, Simone Weil. For both of them, not only our action, but the very quality of our being [...] Read more.
How do we see the world aright? This question is central to Iris Murdoch’s philosophy as well as to that of her great source of inspiration, Simone Weil. For both of them, not only our action, but the very quality of our being depends on the ability to see things as they are, where vision is both a metaphor for immediate understanding and a literal expression of the requirement to train our perception so as to get rid of illusions. For both, too, the method to achieve this goal is attention. For both, finally, attention requires a dethronement of the self, considered as the source of illusion. In this paper I investigate what moral perception means for each of these philosophers and how it operates through attention and its relationship with the self. I will show that, despite many striking similarities, Murdoch’s project does not equal ‘Weil minus God’, but offers a different concept of the self, a different understanding of its removal, and therefore a different picture of attention and moral perception. In evaluating both views, I will gesture towards a third way represented by Zen Buddhism, which both philosophers variously consider but do not embrace. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Moral Perception)
20 pages, 318 KiB  
Article
Armchair Evaluative Knowledge and Sentimental Perceptualism
by Michael Milona
Philosophies 2023, 8(3), 51; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies8030051 - 19 Jun 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1095
Abstract
We seem to be able to acquire evaluative knowledge by mere reflection, or “from the armchair.” But how? This question is especially pressing for proponents of sentimental perceptualism, which is the view that our evaluative knowledge is rooted in affective experiences in much [...] Read more.
We seem to be able to acquire evaluative knowledge by mere reflection, or “from the armchair.” But how? This question is especially pressing for proponents of sentimental perceptualism, which is the view that our evaluative knowledge is rooted in affective experiences in much the way that everyday empirical knowledge is rooted in perception. While such empirical knowledge seems partially explained by causal relations between perceptions and properties in the world, in armchair evaluative inquiry, the relevant evaluative properties are typically not even present. The paper shows how sentimental perceptualists can ultimately provide a broadly causal explanation of our reflective evaluative knowledge. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Moral Perception)
17 pages, 290 KiB  
Article
How Naive Is Contentful Moral Perception?
by Preston J. Werner
Philosophies 2023, 8(3), 49; https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies8030049 - 31 May 2023
Viewed by 1138
Abstract
According to contentful moral perception (CMP), moral properties can be perceived in the same sense as tables, tigers, and tomatoes. Recently, Heather Logue (2012) has distinguished between two potential ways of perceiving a property. A Kantian Property (KP) in perception is one in [...] Read more.
According to contentful moral perception (CMP), moral properties can be perceived in the same sense as tables, tigers, and tomatoes. Recently, Heather Logue (2012) has distinguished between two potential ways of perceiving a property. A Kantian Property (KP) in perception is one in which a perceiver’s access involves a detection of the property via a representational vehicle. A Berkeleyan Property (BP) in perception is one in which a perceiver’s access to the property involves that property as partly constitutive of the experience itself. In this paper, I set aside generalized arguments in favor of one view or another, and instead ask whether proponents of CMP have reasons to understand moral perception as Kantian or Berkeleyan. I explore three possible explanatory differences—(a) explaining the intrinsic motivating force of moral perceptions, (b) providing a metasemantics for moral properties, and (c) providing an epistemology of the normative authority of moral properties. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Moral Perception)
Back to TopTop