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Morality has and continues to play an enormous role in shaping societies. What a civilization agrees upon as right or wrong plays a clear influence in how people interact with world, be it because of their moral attitudes, social judgements or even laws. But how exactly are moral violations or just acts experienced? There is a great deal of debate in the perceptual philosophy literature on the existence of moral perception. Can moral properties be experienced at the level of perception or are the exclusively understood or felt as belief states? Some argue that they are only experienced through emotions, or that they are only cognitive, but others such as Robert Audi suggest that morality can be experienced at the level of perception (Audi, 2013; Faraci, 2014). I intend to argue in favor of the existence of moral perception through theoretical and empirical avenues. I will begin by describing some of Audi’s views on perception in a general and how he ties this into his view on moral perception. I will then address some critiques of Audi’s view of moral perception and offer some of my own. I will next discuss arguments involving contrasts between normal and pathological moral and perceptual states. Finally, I will make a tentative empirical argument via psychological studies of moral foundations.
In my view, moral perception, though not exactly as Audi explains it, offers the best account of the phenomenal experience of witnessing a moral violation Robert Audi offers one of the most relevant and well-known accounts of moral perception. His account is somewhat controversial as is the entire concept of moral perception. In his book Moral Perception (2013), Audi begins by first offering a general account of perception. His account is not extremely in depth and therefore is still potentially compatible with other more specific accounts of perception and various modes of perception. His general account of perception begins by arguing that perception is vertical. He suggests that there are three kinds of perception, the first being simple perception which he defines as “seeing an object.” For example, seeing a book is simple perception (Audi, 2013, p 10). Next, he defines attributive perception as seeing something to be some trait; for example one might see a book to be blue. Finally, he argues for “propositional perception” which would be seeing that a book is blue, as he puts it, seeing the “truth” in the belief state that blue is the color of the book in question (Audi, 2013, p 10). So, he suggests that these all have verifiable correctness conditions.
This sets up the argument he makes later about different level of processing moral experiences. His views on belief formation should also be clarified as they will be relevant to moral perception. Audi makes a point to address the idiom “seeing is believing”. He says that perceptual experiences are separate from belief, and that individuals may form a belief about any perceptual experience they have, but it does not always happen and is not necessary (Audi, 2013, p 17). Say I am drinking from a cup and can see that it is striped. I can have the perceptual experience of the striped cup but may not form the belief that the cup is striped without first paying attention to said cup and forming the thought ‘this cup has stripes’ (Audi, 2013, p. 17). This argument seems naturally fitting to my own phenomenal experience and seems to have the benefit of seeming intuitively accurate. When the distinction between belief and perception comes up in terms of morality it may be somewhat less intuitive. He goes on to give a general account of how things are phenomenologically experienced. He suggests that people get a phenomenological sense of three dimensional things in the world from the physical properties which are experienced; so, the phenomenal experience of anything is grounded by the experience of constitutive properties, color, shape, etc. (Audi, 2013, p. 27). He emphasizes again that this is all perceptual and there is no need to form separate propositions so to phenomenally experience whole objects. He argues that the experience of phenomenal properties that make up object in the real world are causal factors for the experience of these properties (Audi, 2013, p. 26).
This leads him into the question of how this sensing of perceptual properties can lead into a perceptual experience of morality. Audi expands upon his ideas of perception to discuss groundings role in moral perception. He begins by clarifying that moral perception is of course different from the perception of the physical world as there are not the same spaciotemporal properties as experienced in the real world (Audi, 2013, p. 31). He makes another distinction between perceptual and perceptible properties, going on the explain the perceptual properties are the constitutive parts of experience like shape or color and perceptible properties need only be observable and therefore extend to include things like moral experiences (Audi, 2013, p. 32). He explains the existence of moral perception through causal connections between basic perceptual experiences and moral ones. He suggests that moral perceptions “map” on to non-moral properties, like perceptual properties mentioned earlier, and create a sense of moral rightness or wrongness; this integration of moral and normal properties according to Audi produces kind of “disposition” toward right or wrong regarding a moral experience (Audi, 2013, p. 39). He argues that this experience is wholly perceptual and not inferential and does not have to be formed as a position to be identified as wrong. He even likens perceiving a moral wrong doing to perceiving emotion, namely anger, suggesting that if one can perceive behaviors and expressions related to anger, maybe one can also see properties associated with morality (Audi 2013, p. 42). He later makes a comparison to facial recognition saying that one can recognize another’s face without having to make cognitive inferences about details of the face, so too can one recognize injustice without such cognitive insights (Audi, 2013, p. 53). This is another of Audi’s use of intuition about perceptual experience to his benefit.
One of the points he makes which I feel is weakest is his argument towards the end of the chapter that a child who did not yet have a concept of right and wrong would still have moral sense/perception of the wrongness of a certain act. (Audi, 2013, p. 46). I will discuss my issue with this in the next paragraph, as it is related to common critique. He also clarifies it is not the case that all moral knowledge can be perceptually experienced. There are moral intuitions which are not necessarily perceptual. (Audi, 2013, p.46). Later, Audi also discusses the role of emotions in the formation of moral intuition and discusses how moral disagreements come about. While interesting topics, I while focus on his arguments which are essential to moral perception. Overall, Audi’s account of moral perception is interesting and I agree that moral perception is possible. However, I feel Audi’s argument can be improved upon with different lines of thinking and that his description of moral perception can be expanded upon. There have been a variety of critiques on Audi’s view of moral perception.
Some suggests that Audi’s account relies on morality being a natural characteristic (Faraci, 201). Some offering this critique take issue with the seeming assumption that moral perception would serve as an innate function even in those who have not necessarily yet learned a set particular moral values. Audi argues in both his book and an earlier paper on the topic of moral perception that morality need not be naturalized saying, “I am not seeking to naturalize moral properties, nor does explaining the data require (they be naturalized)” (Audi, 2010, p. 92). Despite claiming here to not be naturalizing moral properties he quickly goes on to say “…I am (non-reductively) naturalizing moral perception. For I not only take moral perception to be a causal relation, but grant that the base properties for moral properties are natural….The non-causal element in moral perception and in knowledge acquired through moral perception belongs to conceptual capacities that go with an adequate understanding,” (Audi, 2010, p. 92). Here he claims that he does want to naturalize the perceptual element of moral perception if not the moral properties themselves. He thinks that the perceptual properties in which moral perceptions are grounded are what is natural.
So, the suggestion is that what is right vs wrong is not necessarily naturalistic but that the experience of a sense of wrongness or rightness is naturalistic. This relates back to one of my critiques of Audi book, the example he gives of child witness a moral violation and not have a concept of right vs. wrong but still perceiving an act as wrong. This example suggests a naturalistic view. While Audi claims this is just a naturalizing view of perception, I think this example presents a number of issues. Firstly, I think it is not right to assume that there is no concept of right vs. attached to this sense of wrongness experience. While I agree that the experience of wrongness need not be cognitive, I do not think a child can experience rightness or wrongness without some kind of basic conceptual framework for morality. While it may not be a complex concept, I think for a child to experience this sense of morality, there must first be some background information as is argued by David Faraci (2014). He argues for the mediation of background knowledge in moral perception, though he also suggests this would make moral perception not entirely perceptual, with which I do not agree. Another critique offered of Audi’s perspective is that his idea of “sensing” moral violation is too vague and is an unconvincing account of phenomenal experience. I somewhat sympathize with this criticism as it seems there may be arguments which Audi could have used to more clearly and effectively explain moral perception. One argument I found particularly interesting and convincing come from Preston Werner. Werner brings up several effective point about moral perception which I think are perhaps more effective than Audi’s.
One of Werner’s best arguments in favor of moral perception involves Susanna Sigel’s idea of natural kind properties. (Werner, 2014). He cites Siegel as an example of an argument in favor of the presence of higher level thoughts in phenomenal experience. He specifically mentions her method of phenomenal contrast. Say a person has the novel experience of seeing a cat. They see the things that make the cat a cat but do not know what it is or that it fits into the category of cat. It seems that this person will have a different phenomenological experience of seeing the cat than say a veterinarian who is highly knowledgeable about cats and therefore may see the cat as a specific breed, etc. Even the person who initially did not know what the cat was would seemingly have a different phenomenological experience if the entered the exact same situation later, with the only difference being their knowledge of “cat,” (Werner, 2014). So, in this case the natural kind property would be that of being a cat and we can see a clear contrast of experience between those with and without the experiential knowledge. Might morality be a sort of natural kind property? The issue of naturalizing morality arises again here. I do not want to focus on any argument for which naturalizing moral value is a necessity as the idea a universal morality is unconvincing based on obvious cultural differences.
There are perhaps some moral violations held to particularly wrong by all but one’s thoughts on the degree of wrongness can be affected by a variety of factors for ages to political affiliation (Graham, Haidt, & Nose, 2009). In terms of perception some might have a stronger sense of injustice than other when experiencing a certain moral violation. Though knowledge about morality is not as straight forward as knowledge about what kind of animal you are seeing, there still seems to be evidence of individual variation. In the case of morality an individual doesn’t necessarily just gain more knowledge but is likely shaped more by their culture and what is typically believe as wrong and right. Unfortunately, as Werner (2014) brings up, this slow cultural development of a set of beliefs does not lend itself to a simple before and after comparison like knowledge of natural kinds does. Fortunately, he offers a solution which I hope to add to with some empirical data. Werner’s proposed proxy for a “before and after” knowledge of moral properties phenomenal experiences is to compare neurotypical individuals to “emotionally empathic dysfunctional individuals.” He defines them by saying “EEIDs are individuals who have a fully functioning “theory of mind”— that is, they are capable of inferring the mental states of others based on behavioral, vocal, and contextual evidence—but who nonetheless lack affective empathy” (Werner 2014). The disorder most commonly associated with the traits mentioned would be anti-social personality disorder, though this does not apply to all individuals with ASPD (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
These individuals serve as a proxy for a change in the phenomenal experience because they can have the cognitive experience of knowing something is wrong by learning or being told that it is without the emotional or perceptual reaction one would expect form a typically functioning individual. Werner cites some physiological evidence that emotionally empathic dysfunctional individuals have different phenomenal experiences. In a study involving a psychopathic (similar to ASPD, though not technically a diagnosis) tendencies, individuals with more psychopathic traits tended to have less strong skin conductance responses to negative emotion faces than typical participants which suggests a muted physiological response (Blair et al, 1997). The lack of physiological response suggests at least some degree of difference in phenemonal experience of emotion, though clearly it can’t be definitive proven. Thereby, one could argue that these individuals who because of neurological differences do not experience empathy in the same ways as neurotypical people, would have a different experience of morality, akin to the differences in knowledge of natural kinds. This is an example of an effective contrast argument in favor of moral perception.
The contrast argument allows for a more liberal view of the inclusion of higher-level properties in phenomenal experience. This allows for background knowledge of moral standards in one’s own society to be included in moral perceptual experience which in my view helps to correct some of the issues associated with Audi’s view, which just suggests a kind of moral sensing. I hope to add a bit of empirical research to further verify the contrast argument. Research on moral cognition has been growing in popularity for social psychology in the last couple of years. There is a great deal of research on what kind of factors shape a person’s moral attitudes and research the different aspects of morality. Things like risk aversion and parental status have been shown to affect individual moral attitudes. These difference in moral attitudes between groups may serve to help offer contrasting experiences of moral experience based on background. Rather than a demonstrating a lack of affective moral experience like in emotionally empathic dysfunctional individuals, we can examine individual differences and how that might shape their moral perception. One way in which cognitive moral attitudes are measure in social psychology is through moral foundations. Individuals are presented with various moral scenarios in brief sentences and asked to rate the wrongness of each moral violation.
The violations fall into one of five categories. First is harm which asks about moral violations involving hurting another individual in some way. Next is loyalty, this includes moral violations which relate to betrayal of some group which an individual belongs to. Then there is authority, this include moral violations relating to disobeying authority figure or laws representative of authority figures. Next is fairness, these include moral violations relating to cheating or having unfair advantages (Moral foundation.org). Finally there is purity. These violations relate to contamination and include sexual misdeeds. Individuals from different backgrounds vary vastly in thier moral beliefs, which showcases the cultural effects on morality (Graham, Haidt, & Nose, 2009). Certain groups tend to emphasize some moral foundations moral than others. For example, conservatives to more harshly judge moral violations of purity, authority and loyalty when compared to liberals (Graham, Haidt, & Nose, 2009).
Though details mentioned so far only include cognitive assessments of moral violations, if political background is also related to phenomenological differences in moral perception, this would be further evidence for contrastive differences. It seems most plausible that differences in higher level concepts about morality based on past experiences and knowledge, should have some impact on the way individuals experience moral violations much like having an understanding of a natural kind category would. One study suggests a link between religiosity and experiencing more disgust in relation to homosexuality, which according to these individuals would be a moral violation (Olatunji, 2008). So this provides tentative evidence of a phenomenological difference based on different moral background, though in this case mediated by an emotion. Some research also suggests that parents judge moral violations moral harshly than non-parents, this likely is related to being in a protective frame of mind because of having children (Eibach, Libby, & Ehrlinger, 2009). If there in a phenomenal difference here, perhaps this group is the opposite of the EEDI’s, are instead have a hyperactive sense of moral perception. Overall, there is some existing psychological evidence to support further contrastive differences in moral phenomenology, but research is not wholly conclusive and further research in the area would be valuable. The variability of moral values, however, does seem to suggest that there is unlikely a natural set moral properties common to all individuals. In my view, Audi presents some interesting ideals about moral perception, but his description is not without issue.
The naturalization of certain moral properties that his explanation of moral perception suggests is questionable because of a variety of evidence against morality as a natural property. Arguments from Werner using contrast conditions based on Susanna Siegel’s work are more convincing in my view. This argument better lends itself to include both a priori and empirical evidence. The use of individuals with empathy dysfunction as a comparison group is an effect argument for the existence of a phenomenal difference without moral perception and experience. I also want to suggest that research on factors causing variation in moral vigilance and variations in specific moral foundations supports the existence of a
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