A Theory of Moral Perception
Draft · in progress
This paper has four aims: first, to spell out why a successful theory of moral perception would get moral realism very close to being epistemically home and dry; second, to show that the leading theories of moral perception are all false; third, to argue that these failings generate desiderata for any account of moral perception; and fourth, to argue positively for a new account of moral perception which satisfies these desiderata.
2026 Best Graduate Essay Prize, North Carolina Philosophical Society
Desires Don't Need No Satisfaction
Draft · in progress
This paper starts by assuming satisfied desires make a persons life go better, meaning that desire-satisfactionism (DS) is at least weakly true. I then consider Parfit's famous problem for DS: After you meet a stranger on a train, who you learn is in the late stages of a fatal illness, you form the desire that they recover. Unbeknownst to you, they do. Does this satisfied desire make your life go better? Clearly, your life does not go better, despite your desire being satisfied, thus generating a puzzle for desire-satisfactionism: what more does the view require than a match between satisfied desires and the world? The common solution is to delimit the range of satisfied desires which we can accrue welfare benefit from as to exclude such desires; only satisfied desires about the subject's own life benefit the subject. The negative mission of this paper is to argue that no matter how one delimits the range of satisfied desires, very similar problem cases for desire-satisficationism will arise. I suggest that in addition to ones desires being satisfied, the subject must be in a positive epistemic relationship with their satisfied desires in order to accrue welfare benefit. What kind of relationship? Recent work argues that it is awareness (knowledge + phenomenal consciousness). I argue that this is too demanding, using Gettier-cases to show that the correct epistemic relationship is the non-factive state of justified belief. Along the way, I argue that extant views in moral epistemology disallow morally abhorrent beleifs from ever being justified, thus giving the epistemic route at least part of the appeal as the delimitation route. I also spell out the sort of externalist justification needed to escape experience machine and zombie worries.
