Attention and Blindness: Objectivity and Contingency in Moral Perception

References

• Sherman , Nancy . 1989 . The Fabric of Character: Aristotle's Theory of Virtue 30 Oxford : Clarendon Press .
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• Prominent examples of particularists who are not particularly Aristotelians include Jonathan Dancy, Carol Gilligan, and Lawrence Blum.
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• Garfield , Jay . 2000 . “ in his “Particularity and Principle: The Structure of Moral Knowledge” (in ” . In Moral Particularism Edited by: Little , M. Oxford : Clarendon Press . []), has elegantly teased out the differences and tensions between different kinds of moral particularists.
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• Garfield . “Particularity and Principle,” 202.
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• Murdoch , Iris . 1971 . The Sovereignty of Good 16 – 37 . New York : Schocken Books .
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• 1995 . Hypatia , 10 See, for instance, Margaret Little, “Seeing and Caring: The Role of Affect in Feminist Moral Epistemology,”: 117–37; Holland, “Touching the Weights,” Maria Antonaccio, Picturing the Human (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); and Martha Nussbaum, Love's Knowledge, Oxford 1990.
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• Antonaccio . Picturing the Human 131
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• Ibid., 310.
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• Pratt . “Identity: Skin, Blood, Heart.”
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• Pratt . “Identity: Skin, Blood, Heart,” 17.
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• Murdoch , Iris . “ quoted in Antonaccio ” . In Picturing the Human 134
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• My thanks to Mark Lance for showing me the importance of this kind of blindness.
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• Contat , M. , ed. 1974 . The Writings of Jean-Paul Sartre Evanston : Northwestern University Press . From 229.
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• 1992 . Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination Cambridge , MA : Harvard University Press . 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.” [], 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.
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• Daston , Lorraine and Galison , Peter . 1992 . “The Image of Objectivity,” . Representations , 40 : 82
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• Social Studies of Science , 22 This is a paraphrase, with emphases and wording reworked for my own purposes, of Lorraine Daston, “Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective,” (1992): 597–99, and elsewhere.
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• 82 – 83 . Daston and Galison, “The Image of Objectivity,’
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• Ibid., 117.
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• 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).
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• Sellars , Wilfrid . 1997 . Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind Cambridge , MA : Harvard University Press . See and John McDowell, Mind and World (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), for canonical defenses of this point.
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• Daston and Galison, “The Image of Objectivity,’ 117.
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• Little . Seeing and Caring , 122 second emphasis added.
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• Ibid., 53.
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• Sherman . The Fabric of Character 47
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• Lugones , M. C. and Spelman , E. V. 1983 . “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 See: 573–81. Many thanks to Letitia Meynell for pointing out in private conversation the connection between this point and Lugones and Spelman's classic article.
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• 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.
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• Lugones and Spelman.
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• 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.
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• Daston . “Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective,” 600.
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• See ibid., throughout.
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• 1997 . Hypatia , 12 Tannoch-Bland, “From Aperspectival Objectivity to Strong Objectivity: The Quest for Moral Objectivity,”: 164.
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• 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.
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