Responsibility for Perception
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21461111 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Adrienne Prettyman (0000-0002-9191-5446, Bryn Mawr College, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-29 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Erkenntnis (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0165-0106 • E-ISSN: 1572-8420 |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s10670-025-01029-0 |
| OpenAlex | W7117486225 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 44 |
Perception is widely regarded as exempt from moral assessment. Yet our ordinary practices of praise and blame suggest otherwise: we fault a dentist who fails to see a cavity, or a mechanic who cannot hear engine trouble. This paper develops and defends a theory of perceptual responsibility , according to which individuals are sometimes responsible for how they perceive. I argue that we are responsible for perceptual experiences because they can reflect our evaluative commitments, such as professional standards or moral values. Drawing on empirical work in psychology and neuroscience on perceptual learning, I show that perception can be deliberately shaped by training and, because of this, perception embodies our values. Perception belongs alongside belief, judgment, and other passive mental events for which we bear responsibility, with implications for understanding accountability for perception, perceptual bias, and uniquely perceptual harms
Accountability · Blame · Ontology · Perception · Perceptual psychology · Praise · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Free Will and Agency · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment
Structuring Mind
Causation and Free Will
The Rationality of Perception
Hard Luck
Perceptual Learning
Responsibility for Attitudes
Object categories and expertise
Two Faces of Responsibility
An Evaluation of Studies on Ultrastructure of Tonoplast in Sieve Elements
Attributability, Answerability, and Accountability
Action, Knowledge, and Will
Perceptions of stereotypes applied to women who publicly communicate their STEM work
Blameworthiness and Causal Outcomes
The perceptual learning of socially constructed kinds
Responsibility and Perception
Strict Moral Answerability
The Good, the Bad, and the Blameworthy
Judging as a non-voluntary action
Skepticism about Moral Responsibility
Responsibility for believing
Involuntary Sins
Perceptual Skill And Social Structure
Moral Dimensions
Moral Competence, Moral Blame, and Protest
Perceptual Learning
Perceptual learning
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |