Valenced Experience and the Epistemology of Value

ABSTRACT What is the epistemic role of valenced experience in justifying our beliefs about value? According to the perceptual model, valenced experience justifies beliefs about value in much the same way that perceptual experience justifies beliefs about color, shape, and motion. In some cases, the perceptual model generates plausible verdicts: for example, feeling aversion to the painful condition in your foot justifies believing that this painful condition is bad for you without needing any justification itself. In other cases, however, the perceptual model is implausible: feeling moral admiration towards an act of wanton cruelty cannot justify believing that the act is morally admirable, as this moral emotion is itself unjustified. There is a puzzling asymmetry here that needs to be explained. Why do some valenced feelings justify beliefs about value without needing any justification, whereas others need to be justified in the same way as our evaluative beliefs? We cannot solve this puzzle just by restricting the perceptual model, as this fails to explain why it applies in some cases but not others. Instead, I explain the puzzling asymmetry by combining an inferential model of the epistemology of value with plausible assumptions about the metaphysics of value.