Moral Perception and Knowledge by Principles

The essay focuses on the epistemological import of the model of moral perception by taking into consideration Robert Audi’s recent defense of it. The argument is that Audi’s version of this relation crucially brings into play moral principles, and raises the issue of their distinctive epistemic role. Since the main epistemic purpose of the perceptual model is to account for a non-inferential sort of knowledge, it is unclear what sort of role moral principles can be accorded. Interestingly, many Kantians may agree that not all sorts of moral knowledge are inferential, and reject deonto- logical forms of justification, deductivism, and proceduralism. But they object that intuitionism fails to account for the crucial epistemic role of principles. In particular, they argue to carry on the project of objectively grounding moral knowledge we need a more robust conception of the epistemic role of principles. Key to this dispute is the practice of moral judgment.