Moral perception and its rivals

Proponents of moral perception hold that some of our moral knowledge is perceptual knowledge. Discussions of whether moral perception is possible often seem to assume that there is some attractive alternative account of how we arrive at moral knowledge in those cases that are regarded as among the best candidates for cases of full-fledged moral perception. This chapter challenges that assumption by critically examining some alternative accounts of how we arrive at knowledge in the relevant class of cases, arguing that the more closely one examines these alternative accounts, the more implausible they seem as accounts of how we actually manage to arrive at moral knowledge. A modest version of moral perception is sketched, one that does not suffer from any similarly implausible commitments. There are some concluding reflections on why it matters whether some of our moral knowledge is perceptual.