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Attention and Blindness: Objectivity and Contingency in Moral Perception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Rebecca Kukla
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Extract

Moral perception, as the term is used in moral theory, is the perception of normatively contoured objects and states of affairs, where that perception enables us to engage in practical reason and judgment concerning these particulars. The idea that our capacity for moral perception is a crucial component of our capacity for moral reasoning and agency finds its most explicit origin in Aristotle, for whom virtue begins with the quality of perception. The focus on moral perception within moral theory has made a comeback in the last few decades, especially in the hands of self-proclaimed neo-Aristotelians such as John McDowell, Martha Nussbaum, and Nancy Sherman. For these writers, our perceptual capacities are not static, and the laborious honing of our perceptual skills is a crucial moral task. On this picture, as Nancy Sherman puts it, “How to see becomes as much a matter of inquiry as what to do.”

Moral particularists—including but not restricted to the neo-Aristotelians—have emphasized the centrality of moral perception to moral agency and judgment, as a corrective to moral theories that treat deliberation in terms of universal principles as the privileged keystone of moral agency.

Type
V. Epistemological and Metaphysical Issues
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume , Volume 28: Feminist Moral Philosophy , 2002 , pp. 319 - 346
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2002

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References

1 Nancy, Sherman, The Fabric of Character: Aristotle's Theory of Virtue, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1989, 30.Google Scholar

2 Prominent examples of particularists who are not particularly Aristotelians include Jonathan Dancy, Carol Gilligan, and Lawrence Blum.

3 Jay, Garfield, in his “Particularity and Principle: The Structure of Moral Knowledge” (in Moral Particularism, ed. M., Little [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000])Google Scholar, has elegantly teased out the differences and tensions between different kinds of moral particularists.

4 Margaret, Holland, “Touching the Weights: Moral Perception and Attention,” International Philosophical Quarterly 38 (1998): 300.Google Scholar

5 Garfield, “Particularity and Principle,” 202.

6 Iris, Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 84.Google Scholar

7 Iris, Murdoch, The Sovereignty of Good (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 16–37.Google Scholar

8 See, for instance, Margaret, Little, “Seeing and Caring: The Role of Affect in Feminist Moral Epistemology,” Hypatia 10 (1995): 117-37;Google ScholarHolland, , “Touching the Weights,'’ MariaAntonaccio, Picturing the Human (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000);Google Scholar and Martha, Nussbaum, Love's Knowledge, Oxford 1990.Google Scholar

9 Antonaccio, Picturing the Human, 131.

10 Holland, “Touching the Weights: Moral Perception and Attention,” 306-7.

11 Ibid., 310.

12 Minnie Bruce, Pratt, “Identity: Skin, Blood, Heart,” in Yours in Struggle, ed. Elly, Bulkin, Minnie Bruce, Pratt, and Barbara, Smith (Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books, 1984), 13.Google Scholar

13 Pratt, “Identity: Skin, Blood, Heart.“

14 Pratt, “Identity: Skin, Blood, Heart,” 17.

15 Iris Murdoch, quoted in Antonaccio, Picturing the Human, 134.

16 My thanks to Mark Lance for showing me the importance of this kind of blindness.

17 From The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre, ed. M., Contat (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 229.Google Scholar

18 Liberals of this stripe pride themselves on being blind to differences such as gender and race - on their supposed failure to see these differences. Toni Morrison points out that “the habit of ignoring race is understood to be a graceful, even generous liberal gesture. To notice is to recognize an already discredited difference.” (Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992], 9–10). Proponents of this type of blindness insist that abuse and oppression based on the specificities of identity, such as racism, sexism, and homophobia, are wrong, while at the same time they claim that their own moral perception of others is more just and accurate when it is blind to such features. But it is hard to see how we can understand our obligations and responsibilities to someone if we set aside the particularities of the system of oppression in which they are caught. Such impersonalism recognizes the acts of the racist or homophobe as morally wrong, but, paradoxically, it does not recognize the distinct moral position of the objects of these acts.

19 Lorraine, Daston and Peter, Galison, “The Image of Objectivity,” Representations 40 (1992): 82.Google Scholar

20 This is a paraphrase, with emphases and wording reworked for my own purposes, of Lorraine, Daston, “Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective,” Social Studies of Science 22 (1992): 597-99Google Scholar, and elsewhere.

21 Daston, and Galison, , “The Image of Objectivity,” 82–83.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., 117.

23 After all, as Daston asks, “why should public knowledge- observations most easily communicated to and replicated by as many people as possible - lay metaphysical claim to being the closest approximation of the real?” (“Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective,” 613).

24 John, McDowell, “Virtue and Reason,” Monist 62 (1976): 345.Google Scholar

25 See Wilfrid, Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997)Google Scholar, and John, McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, for canonical defenses of this point.

26 Daston, and Galison, , “The Image of Objectivity,” 117.Google Scholar

27 Little, Seeing and Caring, 122, second emphasis added.

28 Sherman, The Fabric of Character, 47.

29 Ibid., 53.

30 See M. C., Lugones and E. V., Spelman, “Have We Got a Theory for You! Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism, and the Demand for ‘The Woman's Voice',” Women's Studies International Forum 6 (1983): 573-81.Google Scholar Many thanks to Letitia Meynell for pointing out in private conversation the connection between this point and Lugones and Spelman's classic article.

31 Mark Lance emphasized this point to me in a private communication. Those of us who raise children know the difficulties and frustrations involved in cultivating moral perception all too well, as Aristotle recognized.

32 Lugones and Spelman.

33 In a public presentation of this paper, Susan Sherwin led me to see the importance of pointing out that we may also need to inculcate in ourselves and others -young girls, for instance- the insight and self-esteem required for knowing when to reject others’ claims to authoritative seeing.

34 Daston, “Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective,” 600.

35 See ibid., throughout.

36 Tannoch-Bland, , “From Aperspectival Objectivity to Strong Objectivity: The Quest for Moral Objectivity,” Hypatia 12 (1997): 164.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Many thanks to Samantha Brennan and to the other contributors to this volume, for making the volume happen and for providing helpful feedback. Many thanks also to Richard Manning and Laura Ruetsche for invaluable input along the way. This paper has a long history. I began writing it over ten years ago, and its writing was originally motivated by spite and anger. I was fueled by fury at people who did not see their own spaces of ignorance and blindness as moral failings or matters of personal responsibility. Before the paper was anywhere near ready for publication, I had to stop working on it because my anger had become unproductive. What motivated me to return to it years later was not spite or anger, but two very different responses to particular others. I was moved by my encounters with a few people who had authentically taken on the task of helping others see and had done so with skill, dedication, and success. I was also grateful to others who taught me, during the interim, about the importance and productive potential of my own epistemic humility in my labors towards perceptual acuity. The finished paper, I believe, bears the twin traces of my anger and my respect and gratitude. Those who helped make this paper a work of respect and humility, and hence enabled it to come to completion, include Mark Lance, Rosemarie Garland Thompson, Jennifer Stewart, John Haugeland, Kirsten Cowan, Elisa Kukla, Amy Lund, Sarah Hardy, and in particular the late Tamara Horowitz.