Stephen Downes

We hold people morally responsible only for things they can control. "Perception has long been assumed to be a passive mental event. At first pass, it seems wrong to say that passive events can reflect on us in a morally significant way." But as Adrienne Prettyman points out, there are many cases where we hold people responsible for failing to perceive something - a dentist should have seen a cavity, a referee should have seen a penalty, a conductor should have heard an out-of-tune oboe. What happens is that though a perception is passive, it can be shaped by conscious decisions (or non-decisions) such as attention, training or bias. "The flexibility of perception means that we can alter perception by deliberately cultivating perceptual abilities that align with our values," including professional values and community values. This is a great paper that examines the relation between perception and ethics in detail and is recommended for those interested in either subject.