Perceiving the Normative World: The Master Argument

Abstract Chapter 3 develops a master argument for direct perceptualism, which is the view that normative properties can be directly perceived and that such perception grounds normative knowledge. The titular master argument defends direct perceptualism by elimination; the main claim is that only direct perceptualism can capture all of the desiderata for a successful account of concrete normative learning. The chapter proceeds by systematically eliminating alternatives: Naïve inferentialism is rejected for requiring conscious reasoning that is absent in these cases; sophisticated inferentialism fails because it depends on access to general principles that agents often lack; brute reliabilism is dismissed for not providing subjects with an accessible rationale for their beliefs, while intuitionist views either reintroduce problematic appeals to principles or inadequately account for how concrete normative learning constitutively involves perception. Through discussion of these views, the chapter identifies a set of explanatory constraints that only direct perceptualism satisfies.