ABSTRACT
This paper examines the implications of Iris Murdoch’s distinctive conception of moral perception as a form of ‘vision’ for Terence Cuneo’s transcendental argument for moral realism from speech act theory. I reject Cuneo’s view that conventional norms that pertain to speech are themselves moral norms in developing a metaethical view of moral value as such, or that linguistic competence is itself a moral competence. I instead argue that there is an essentially relational dimension to realistic and continuous self- cultivation in concept application that is helpfully understood in terms of virtue. This, if I am right, brings into view a new perspective on Murdoch’s difficult claim that virtue is “pointless” in as much as the fate of being partly hidden from ourselves in social convention is inevitable. Herein lies also the ethical significance of the relational concept of attunement as a moral virtue in appreciating the self and others in moral agency.
