ABSTRACT
Though Reid does not use the phrases ‘instinctive moral judgment,’ ‘rational moral judgment,’ ‘derived moral value,’ and ‘original moral value,’ these phrases help show how his theories of perception and aesthetic experience extend to his account of the moral faculty:
5. Conclusion Is Reid’s moral faculty a faculty of sense? Is moral experience perceptual? The best answer to these questions is that the moral faculty is a basic representational faculty, independent of – but on a par with – such other basic representational faculties as the external senses and the internal sense of taste. By the moral faculty, we experience the world as being a certain way, becoming sensitive to real features in the environment, becoming responsive to a larger range of morally relevant properties. At first we respond only or mainly to real moral
Faculties Signs Objects External sense Original Perception sensations hardness, softness,
figure, motion, color, illumination, and other proper sensibles
Acquired Perception hardness, softness, figure, motion, color, illumination, and other proper sensibles
depth in vision, the size of bells by hearing, the weight of cattle by sight, and kind properties
Internal sense Aesthetic Perception
Instinctive Judgments of Taste
feelings/emotions derived beauty: perfections in objects, e.g., shininess, symmetry, concordance, etc.
