Journal of Applied Philosophy, Vol. 20, No.

3, 2003 Vices of Inattention 279

Vices of Inattention

KATHIE JENNI

 Why do we routinely betray moral commitments that, in some sense, we authent-
ically embrace? One explanation involves inattention: failure to attend to morally important
aspects of our lives. Inattention ranges from an unmotivated lack of focus, or “simple”
inattention, to more purposeful and wilful self-deception. Self-deception has received exhaust-
ive and insightful treatment by philosophers and psychologists; what remains unexamined is
the less complex, but more pervasive phenomenon of simple inattention. Since inattention is at
least equally important in accounting for our routine moral failures, this gap is an important
one to fill.
In this essay I examine moral dimensions of inattention: what makes it problematic, what
vices it reflects, what duties we have to overcome it, and how we might try to do that. I argue
that inattention obscures responsibilities to prevent harm, erodes autonomy, manifests a lack of
virtue, and undermines integrity. For these reasons, we have obligations of attentiveness.
I propose that we should attend (at least) to apparent violations of our moral values in which
we are personally implicated, which we have power to affect, and to which we have been
directed by clues that something is amiss. I end with practical suggestions for enhancing our
attentiveness.

Holocaust studies, social psychology, and moral philosophy seek to explain why ordin-
ary people do extraordinary evil. Hannah Arendt’s work on the banality of evil is
among the best-known discussions, showing that behind atrocities one usually finds
not sociopathic monsters, but ordinary persons who have lost their sense of personal
responsibility [1].
Even apart from dramatic evils such as genocide, people regularly act (or fail to act)
in ways that their moral values rather clearly condemn. Why is it that we often do
what, at some level, we believe that we should not? Why do we often fail to do what we
clearly should do, in light of our moral commitments? Weakness of will is a partial
explanation, but seems best suited to account for episodic moral failings: the person
who cheats on her spouse, breaks a promise, or betrays a confidence. Practices that
persist for years in glaring contrast to professed values may involve weakness of will,
but more must be said to explain them. Why do people routinely betray moral commit-
ments that, in some sense, they authentically embrace?
One explanation involves inattention: failure to attend to morally important aspects
of our lives. I refer here to a range of moral failings, from simply not noticing the
circumstances of our actions to more active and systematic strategies of self-deception;
from an unmotivated lack of focus, which I call “simple” inattention, to purposeful and
self-manipulative uses of selective attention and wilful ignorance. Self-deception has
received exhaustive and insightful treatment by philosophers and psychologists alike [2].

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for Applied
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2003 Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main
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280 Kathie Jenni

What remains unexamined is the less complex, but far more pervasive phenomenon of
simple inattention. Since inattention is (at least) equally important in accounting for
our routine moral failures, this gap is an important one to fill.
In this essay I examine moral dimensions of inattention: what makes it problematic,
what vices it reflects, what duties we have to overcome it, and what steps we might take
to do that. The impetus for my discussion, and the example I use as a focus, comes
from the area of animal abuse. But the phenomena in question are part of a much
broader pattern. Similar failures of attentiveness can be seen in our (missing) responses
to child abuse, environmental degradation, world hunger: almost any social problem
one can name. While greed, malevolence, and cruelty play some role in such catastrophes,
the problems persist primarily due to the inattention of ordinary agents.
In the following I discuss ways in which we avoid attentiveness, offer a moral
diagnosis of what is problematic about our inattention, consider questions about how
much (and what kind of ) attentiveness is morally required, and suggest ways in which
we might attempt to remedy our chronic inattention [3].

Varieties of Inattention

Pigs are as intelligent and sociable as dogs. They are by nature smart, playful, affec-
tionate, and clean. But on factory farms, pigs are egregiously mistreated. Impregnated
while penned in “rape-racks,” sows are subsequently confined to all-metal breeding
crates barely bigger than their bodies for most of their lives. They lie in them immob-
ilized, with no outlet for instinctual drives and no mental stimulation, giving birth to
litter after litter of piglets until they are eventually slaughtered.
Their male counterparts are aggressive and prone to fighting when crowded. Hence
when boars are loaded for transport, employees with wooden bats beat them into
submission by breaking their noses. For speed and efficiency, electric prods are used
to hurry them along. The pigs scramble frantically to escape the prods and squeal in
pain [4].
If we were to see a neighbour doing these things to an animal in his backyard, we
would call it torture. When students witness these things documented in films of
factory farms, even those unmoved by any notion of animal rights condemn such
practices as brutal, cruel, and wrong. Yet the practices, institutionalised as routine
business procedures, continue uninterrupted. They go on, for the most part, unprotested.
They continue not primarily because of sadism, cruelty, perversity, or greed (although
all of these are present in some individuals involved), but because of obliviousness and
inattention on the part of the general public — ordinary citizens who support the
practices by purchasing their products and who could effect change through consumer
pressure. Factory farms are kept well-hidden from consumers; we do not have to see
the violence within them or hear abused animals’ cries. And so we are, in general, not
disturbed. Most of us grow to adulthood unaware of the cruelty involved in factory
farming; and simply because the question does not arise, many remain oblivious through-
out their lives.
Even those whose attention is deliberately directed to the practice — students who
see films of factory farming and judge it unacceptable — generally return to their
previous equanimity before too long. Many who stop buying meat in response to

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learning about the cruelty involved in its production eventually return to their old
habits. If they feel uncomfortable about it, there are few signs of this.
It seems clear that such people have not changed their minds about the facts of factory
farming or the morality of cruelty. They have not gone through a process of delibera-
tion and arrived at the judgment that factory farming is morally acceptable. Instead,
they have allowed facts they once clearly perceived, and accepted as directly relevant to
the morality of their conduct, to recede into vagueness or oblivion.
The pattern appears whenever our awareness is raised about a social issue, usually
something that happens quite by accident. Most of us do not seek out opportunities to
learn of unfamiliar social problems, and most experience a merely temporary sense of
urgency and moral obligation when such occasions arise. We encounter facts about
suffering or injustice that distress us, and feel a moral need to do something about it;
but hours later the sharpness of the imperative is blunted, and a few days later it’s
gone. We lose our focus; our attention is diverted; we forget. Thus obliviousness to
problems that had not been called to our attention is replaced by inattention in the
face of clear signs that something is wrong.
Why does this occur? There are all too many reasons. Most people’s lives are full of
hassles and distractions; of worries about family and finances. We live fragmented and
harried lives, so that it is hard to retain our moral focus even when we don’t have self-
interested motives for losing it. And of course we often have self-interested motives: it’s
hard to change our habits. It is hard to acknowledge that one is surrounded by and
complicit in brutality. It’s easier to maintain self-respect and peace of mind if we forget
indications of trouble.
Humans’ capacity to avoid unpleasant awareness is remarkable in its versatility. We
use selective attention, creative reinterpretation, selective memory, and other strategies
of self-deception to avoid confronting problematic aspects of our lives. We discredit
sources of painful information, fail to follow up disturbing leads, selectively control the
data we acquire. Most effectively of all, we simply let the momentum of day-to-day
pressures overwhelm moments of uneasiness or moral clarity that do occur.

Moral Problems with Inattention

Should we accept this situation as normal, as necessary to our peace of mind and
mental health? Or should we be disturbed by our routine inattention?
I think that we should be disturbed, and that pervasive inattention is deeply problem-
atic. It is problematic because it obscures responsibilities to prevent harm, erodes
autonomy, manifests a lack of virtue, and undermines integrity. I’ll examine each of
these problems in turn.

Harm
It is clear that we cannot attend to everything around us. Some, in fact, have argued
persuasively that inattention, avoidance, and even self-deception are essential to effect-
ive functioning and mental health [5]. When, then, is inattentiveness a moral failing?
An initial response is that inattention is wrong when it enables us adversely to affect
the welfare of others. Elizabeth Linehan articulates the moral principle involved:

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282 Kathie Jenni

[C]areful scrutiny of the beliefs that guide our action is required when the
consequences of those actions could involve grave harm to others. In other
words, the basic moral imperative to avoid evil sometimes obliges us to seek
knowledge; knowledge of the moral law, knowledge of particular circumstances,
knowledge of ourselves. The greater the possible harm, the more stringent the
obligation [6].

Linehan notes that insufficient knowledge can be the result of either “not working to
know” or “working not to know,” and that both policies carry heavy moral weight
when they enable one to cause grave harm to others. This view nicely explains our
reactions to the Nazi doctors at the centrepiece of her discussion. She cites an inter-
view of Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist who has done extensive research on doctors at
Auschwitz and the medical profession under Hitler:

[O]ne doctor who had shipped large quantities of cyanide to the SS storm
troopers seemed genuinely shocked to learn that it had been used to extermin-
ate Jews and other people. Comments Lifton dryly: “He had worked very hard
not to know” [7].

Linehan observes that the doctor had “not worked to know” in ways that he could
have: by asking what the cyanide was used for, inquiring into what was happening, and
so on. But given the social context of his action, it seems clear that he also actively
“worked not to know,” for what was happening was fairly obvious and knowing
relatively easy. This would have involved suppressing any doubts that arose by avoid-
ing conversations about the camps, discrediting those who spoke of them, refusing
to notice patterns in what he heard, distracting himself by plunging into work, and
so on [8].
Albert Speer provides an example of the same phenomenon candidly acknow-
ledged. In a well-known passage in his memoirs [9], Speer reports that in summer
of 1944, Karl Hanke, a friend whom Speer describes as “a man of sympathy and
directness,” came to see him. Confused and speaking falteringly, Hanke advised
Speer never to accept an invitation to inspect a concentration camp in Upper Silesia:
never, under any circumstances. He had seen something there which he was not
permitted to describe and indeed could not describe. Hanke was probably speaking
of Auschwitz.
Here was a clue that something terrible was happening: something upsetting to
persons of “sympathy” like Hanke. But Speer did not follow up the lead. This is his
account:

I did not query him, I did not query Himmler, I did not query Hitler, I did
not speak with personal friends. I did not investigate — for I did not want
to know what was happening there. . . . During those few seconds, while Hanke
was warning me, the whole responsibility had become a reality again.
. . . From that moment on, I was inescapably contaminated morally; from fear
of discovering something which might have made me turn from my course, I
had closed my eyes. . . . Because I failed at that time, I still feel, to this day,
responsible for Auschwitz in a wholly personal sense [10].

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My claim is that many “decent” persons are acting in similar ways today, and that
there are similar moral problems with our conduct. We do not “work to know” what
suffering our habits may entail, we “work not to know” when disturbing facts threaten
to destroy our peace of mind, and because of this we support brutality.
Some will challenge my analogy between the psychology of the Holocaust and
widespread tolerance of animal abuse, and may even find it morally offensive. For
the Holocaust involved the mass-murder and torture of humans, something at least
nominally ruled out by many moral schemes, whereas non-human animals are often
accorded lower moral status. Thus (some will argue) there is no inconsistency between
practices and moral outlook in the case of animals, as there is when genocide occurs.
But there is inconsistency here. Although animals’ moral status is lower than humans’
in the conventional view, causing needless suffering to animals is still considered wrong.
Humaneness as a value can and does persist alongside hierarchical rankings, so that
people who would invariably save a human life over a non-human’s can nevertheless
find cruelty to both animals and humans to be wrong. Americans, for example, reveal
a deep abhorrence of cruelty when we encounter it directly — that is, when we are
forced to pay attention to it. Thus the blind eye that we turn to routine, systematic
animal abuse is as striking in its incompatibility with basic values as many nations’
tolerance of genocide.
One difference between our contemporaries’ situation and that of Nazis like Speer
makes the former seem more culpable. Speer’s options were to (a) cease co-operation
with Hitler’s regime and risk imprisonment and death, (b) continue co-operation but
acknowledge complicity in mass-murder, or (c) continue complicity and hide the truth
from himself. The contemporary meat-eater’s options are far less stark. She may (a)
lessen her support of intensive farming by becoming a vegetarian or vegan, (b) con-
tinue to eat animal products but acknowledge complicity in cruelty, or (c) continue
complicity and hide the truth about it from herself. Given the relatively light “burden”
involved in changing one’s diet, even those who sympathize with self-deceivers caught
in Nazi Germany may marvel at how few adopt this course.
Marcia Baron ties self-deception to a broader range of responsibilities than Linehan,
focusing not just on harm that one may be doing (or supporting) oneself, but also on
problems one has not caused, but should address. In both cases,
[s]elf-deception serves to shield the agent from the recognition of something
that he really should (morally) attend to. . . . Even if it is not his own conduct,
and even if he is not at all to blame, it may be the case that he has some
responsibility to try to rectify the problem or at least alleviate the pain [11].
The selective focus used in self-deception, as well as simple inattention, keep one from
meeting these responsibilities: both “may prevent [one] from offering assistance by
hindering [one] from seeing a problem or from seeing it as solvable . . .” [12]. Thus
Germans who deceived themselves about where cargo trains filled with Jews were
going, people who avoid noticing a neighbour’s child abuse, and those who ignore the
abuse of animals in business are all doing something problematic. This is true only if
we accept responsibilities to rescue sufferers from third parties (not merely to avoid
harming others ourselves), but it seems that we should accept such responsibilities
when the harm being done is severe.

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Autonomy

For Baron, though, the deeper problem with self-deception lies in the way in which
it undermines moral agency. It clearly does so in episodic and limited ways: “[w]ith
respect to the activities affected by my self-induced false beliefs or pictures, . . .
I . . . operate with inadequate information . . . or a warped view of the circumstances”
[13]. This is true, for example, “when I dupe myself into thinking that I cannot
change when in fact I can . . .” [14]. But self-deception erodes agency in a deeper,
more insidious way:

Self-deception can become a habit, a strategy one falls back on too often.
Second, self-deception often requires, for its efficacy, further self-deception.
The need to see things a certain way, despite the evidence, becomes increas-
ingly demanding, leading one to gaze, and to focus and interpret what one
sees, in a way that supports the shaky view that one has duped oneself into
taking. Self-deception is fecund [15].

The further self-deception spreads, “the less we are able to assess evidence fairly, to be
open to alternative ways of seeing things, to understand ourselves, and to be in con-
trol . . . of how we live our lives . . .” [16]. Thus self-deception is problematic because
it erodes our capacity for self-scrutiny, and thereby our capacity to function as autonom-
ous, responsible agents.
But inattention is often unmotivated — a result of psychological traits and aspects of
contemporary life noted earlier. What we do not notice encompasses a great deal, but
not because we have purposively averted our gaze. Rather, we have simply not been
directed to notice many things and have not been trained to reflect upon the scope of
our attention. What we do see is often the result of chance: stories we encounter in the
news, prominent local concerns, problems that have cropped up in our families. Issues
that have not been called to our attention through such contingencies remain unno-
ticed, objects (at most) of vague and sporadic awareness. Does this present a problem
for our agency?
Ronald D. Milo suggests that it does, in his discussion of “moral negligence.” Milo
points out that we have not just first-order obligations to avoid certain kinds of acts,
but also a second-order obligation to make sure that our proposed acts are not acts of
one of those kinds (or, if they are, that other considerations outweigh prima facie
proscriptions). Moral negligence consists in “a culpable failure to take those precau-
tions necessary to assure oneself, before acting, that what one proposes to do is not in
violation of one’s moral principles” [17].
To avoid being negligent in this sense, one must think about what one is doing —
“what sort of act it is, what the circumstances are, what the consequences are apt to
be, etc” [18]. To make sure that we do that adequately, we must often take special
care not to be blinded or distracted by non-moral desires and feelings that “not only
cause us to do things that we believe to be morally wrong, but . . . prevent us from
seeing that what we do is wrong” [19].
Self-deceivers deploy skills of selective focus and creative interpretation to convince
themselves that what they are doing is acceptable when they themselves suspect that it
is not. This makes their moral negligence especially perverse. But the unmotivated,
“simply” inattentive, who fail to attend to morally important features of their practices

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and hence fail to ensure their consonance with moral values they embrace, are also
negligent in Milo’s sense. When we remain unaware of the circumstances of our
actions — our complicity in suffering, for instance — we cannot form a careful judg-
ment about whether our actions are harmonious with our moral values. Instead, we
allow the force of social convention and personal habit to determine what we do and
fail to do.
Neither the self-deceived nor the simply inattentive are clearly and consciously
deciding how they ought to live (and how they will live) in light of the relevant facts —
that is, neither is living autonomously [20]. A more serious failing occurs when agents
actively suppress emerging qualms about their practices. Many knowingly (without
self-deception) allow custom and popular opinion to overwhelm unwelcome doubts,
willingly sacrificing a chance to reconsider for the comfort of conventionality. Here
agents not only fail to achieve autonomy; they voluntarily forfeit it.

Courage, Self-Control, Compassion

Failure to achieve autonomy is not surprising if agents lack virtues such as courage and
self-control [21]. For to be autonomous one must be “able to resist the fear of failure,
ridicule or disapproval that threatens to drive one into reliance on the guidance of
others” rather than one’s independent judgment [22].
As John Benson notes, “[c]ourage and self-control enter into the forming of judg-
ments as well as into acting upon them” [23]. Fear that one may reach the “wrong”
conclusion, from the perspective of narrow self-interest, social acceptability, or the
desire to continue familiar routine, must be overcome when a moral question bears on
one’s own conduct. Impatience at yet another challenge to tradition must be controlled
to investigate whether a serious concern is really present. Even more fundamentally,
“fear of getting the wrong answer, of being thought unorthodox, may actually prevent
a person from trusting himself to accept the truth of his own observations or the safety
of his own inferences;” hence Benson’s perceptive observation that “intellectual skills
cannot exist without qualities of character” [24].
Milo extends the point when he characterizes what is lacking in moral negligence as
“the courage to stand one’s ground with respect to maintaining one’s moral convictions
[not simply forming them] against the onslaught of contrary desires and emotions”
[25].
It is not clear to what degree people are undermined in their thinking by a kind of
cowardice. But it’s worth considering, in this connection, society’s distrust of radical
thought (regardless of its content), and the widespread assumption that “extremist”
views are held only by fanatics and are, almost by definition, wrong. It’s possible that
aversion to being considered radical — or, worse, to being radical — complements self-
interest in subverting moral thought.
How does the virtue of self-control enter into the formation of our moral judgments?
Milo points out that moral negligence is closely related to weakness of will. Both
exhibit

[t]he same basic fault on the part of the agent — namely, a failure to take
those measures and precautions necessary to ensure that one’s actions are in
conformity with one’s moral principles. Moreover, in both cases this involves

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a failure to exercise certain capacities of rational self-control in the manage-

ment of desires and emotions. . . . Failing to prevent one’s desires and emo-
tions from interfering with one’s implementing one’s judgment results in moral
weakness, whereas failing to prevent them from obscuring one’s realization
that one’s act is wrong is the cause of moral negligence [26].

Both kinds of failure lead some to engage in conduct that they themselves judge to be
wrong. But lack of self-control is also present in those who never decide whether they
consider a practice to be wrong: who leave the question unresolved, allowing desires
and emotions (on the one hand) or distractions (on the other) to interfere with forming
a well-considered judgment. Thus the inattentive — especially those who forget or
suppress moral doubts about a practice after they arise — often manifest a lack of
self-control, as well as insufficient courage [27].
Why do people fail in self-control? Perhaps some agents simply lack normal capacit-
ies that they should have acquired in the course of moral development [28]. But as
Milo notes, this explanation is not always plausible, for sometimes we have independ-
ent evidence that an agent can resist temptation or retain focus when she tries; and those
who evidently possess normal powers of self-control may fail only in isolated cases
[29]. Some people, for example, control their eating habits in order to lose weight, but
don’t exert the same effort in response to moral problems with their food. Why not?
Milo suggests an explanation: “Perhaps the agent simply does not care enough to
make very much of an effort in order to resist” contrary desires and dispositions [30].
This would make sense of the self-controlled, self-interested dieter who does not
renounce a favourite food when her moral values point in that direction. While self-
interest is a naturally powerful motive for most, perhaps moral values that are in some
sense embraced by the agent retain a weaker hold on her. In such cases, we can say
that if one had cared more about (say) animal suffering — if one had cared enough —
one would have made the effort to resist the desires, social pressures, distractions, and
simple force of habit that undermine both moral reflection about one’s conduct (the
forming of a careful moral judgment) and the strength to live by one’s convictions.
In such cases, the ease with which agents forget moral qualms and continue prob-
lematic practices reveals their deficient compassion. As Lawrence Blum notes,

[A]n aspect of compassion is its strength and duration. If the distress, sorrow,
hopes, and desires of an altruistic attitude were merely passing reactions or
twinges of feeling, they would be insufficient for the level of concern, the
imaginative reconstruction, and the disposition to beneficent action required
for compassion . . . [31].

As Blum notes, “[w]e would hardly attribute compassion to X if she were to saunter
by on a spring day and, seeing an elderly man fall on the sidewalk, walk right by,
perhaps with a sad shudder of dismay . . .” [32]. Even less should we consider an agent
compassionate if she were to discover that she had been inadvertently contributing to
someone’s suffering, and that she could cease doing so at no cost to her welfare, but
who continued the troubling activity after a “shudder of dismay.” But this is exactly
what many agents do with respect to animal abuse in agribusiness. Some bury their
dismay under a self-deceptive illusion that all is well before they “saunter on,” and
perhaps those who need to do so are more compassionate than those who fully consciously

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walk on. But in both cases, as well as in cases of inattention and forgetting, the agent
does not have enough concern to overcome self-interested desires and distractions.
Ignoring, allowing oneself to forget, or deceiving oneself about suffering in which one
is complicit all seem incompatible with the sustained concern for others’ welfare and
the disposition to help them that constitute compassion.
“Simple” inattention does not always manifest a failure of compassion; in some
cases, it results from an obfuscating social climate. The degree of effort required to
suspect, detect, and investigate a problem influences our judgments here: failure to
initiate an inquiry or consider a problem may indicate not an absence of concern, but
lack of imagination or excusable ignorance. Depending on whether (and how many)
indications of potential problems are available, our judgments of the simply inattentive
may range from finding them blameless due to social circumstances, to judging that
they lack imagination, to thinking them deficient in concern [33].

Integrity
Finally, the inattentive sacrifice integrity. Integrity is a complex concept, but most
essentially it is a condition of personal integration, wholeness, and coherence [34]. It is
a second-order virtue and unlike character traits such as compassion in that it “does
not generate its own motive” [35]; integrity presupposes lower-order commitments
and consists in remaining true to those commitments even when it is difficult. The
commitments we think of when we are concerned with integrity are those that are most
important to personal and moral identity. Thus integrity involves being true to oneself,
maintaining personal coherence through being faithful to the commitments that give
one one’s identity.
As Lynn McFall notes, “integrity requires ‘sticking to one’s principles’ . . . in the
face of temptation, including the temptation to redescription” [36]. This means that
the person of (complete) integrity will not succumb to weakness of will and do some-
thing that she thinks is wrong. It also means that she will not self-deceptively “redescribe”
an act to rationalize failure to honour her principles. Since doing the latter corrodes the
ability even to know what one is doing, it involves a more serious compromising of
integrity than violating one’s principles, but knowing it. It is bad enough to contravene
one’s values; it seems a deeper wrong to do this and then convince oneself that one
has not. In doing so, one loses the partial redemption of a lucid and well-grounded
sense of guilt.
The simply inattentive, who fail to notice problematic features of their actions not
because of motivated effort but because of distractions and myopia, fail in integrity, as
well. While their gaps in attention are not self-induced and therefore seem less vicious,
such agents nonetheless fall short of living well-integrated lives [37].

Duties of Attentiveness

Inattention to morally significant matters is seriously problematic, the more so as it is

increasingly purposive. Yet some inattention is clearly necessary. Given cognitive and
psychological human limitations, we cannot attend to everything even in the full course
of our lives. Selective attention is an indispensable aid to our ability to function [38].

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288 Kathie Jenni

Thus we face difficult questions. How can we sustain the selective focus that is
essential to ordinary life without doing moral damage to ourselves or others? To what
do we need (morally) to pay attention? How far does the responsibility to “work to
know” extend? What kind of attention is required? To paraphrase Amélie Rorty, “What
does phronesis about inattention require?” [39].
An initial answer is that we should tolerate inattention that is essential to emotional
well-being, healthy relationships, and other legitimate ends; but not inattention to
violations of our moral values. Perhaps our aim should be to attend to morally salient
features of our situation, what counts as salient being determined by our moral prin-
ciples or values [40].
But unless limited dramatically in scope, this guideline is unrealistic; for the world
includes many violations of our moral values. Attempting to attend to everything that
is problematic seems not just impossible, but very ill-advised: an invitation to insanity.
This would seem true even if we aimed at thorough awareness of just one kind of
moral violation: needless suffering caused by human beings. Taken together, such facts
are devastating even when fleetingly glimpsed [41]. Thus wisdom in managing aware-
ness cannot reside in attempting full attentiveness to violations of our moral values.
Perhaps we should only attend to violations in which we are personally implicated.
This seems to follow from the moral considerations examined earlier: duties to avoid
harming others, ideals of autonomy, virtues such as courage and compassion, and
integrity. All point to the need to be aware of what our own actions cause or (more
often) support. It is consumers’ desire for inexpensive meat that sustains brutal factory
farming, our careless economy in buying clothes that propels sweatshop labour,
materialism that drives us toward environmental ruin; thus we should attend well to
these problems. This guideline allows relaxed standards of attentiveness for situations
over which we lack control: the torture of political prisoners and massacres in far-off
lands.
Even this is not quite accurate, for patterns of voting or protest can affect government
policies that alleviate or compound suffering of these more distant kinds. But it does
provide a starting-point: as we are more directly implicated in a problematic practice
and as we have more power to affect it, demands on our attentiveness increase [42].
This seems a reasonable idea; but given the global economy and pervasive intercon-
nections of the contemporary world, it, too, may entail obligations of unmanageable
scope. Perhaps it is unreasonable in what it asks of ordinary humans, for it would seem
to call for burdensome investigations to track the history of everything we purchase, for
a start [43].
How far does the responsibility to “work to know” extend? Can we expect people
to seek a clear conception of all of their actions with significant moral dimensions?
Some argue that since no one can attain an Archimidean perspective from which to
judge all of our practices, and since the press of convention makes some practices
harder to question than others, we should use caution in judging agents in the past
who supported things we now consider evil [44]. Similarly, perhaps we should not
expect responsible agents of today to investigate all social practices in which they are
involved.
Nevertheless, we might reasonably expect them to investigate when clues appear that
point to moral problems. When encounters with reformers or glimpses of disturbing
facts raise questions, we can expect conscientious agents to follow through with further

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inquiry. We can judge it wrong to suppress doubts that arise, or to allow them to fade
without investigation, when support of harmful practices appears to be in question.
Thus we have a tentative answer to the question of how much we need to attend to
if we are morally responsible. We need to attend (at least) to seeming violations of our
moral values in which we are personally implicated, which we have some power to
affect, and to which we have been directed by indications that something is amiss.
But attention can take many forms. What kind of attention — what quality of
awareness — is morally required of us? Since moral aims will not be effectively pursued
by those who fall into despair, and since we have a legitimate interest in preserving
mental health, asking how closely and in general how we need attend to disturbing
situations is not a sign of moral callousness.
One realistic answer is that (when we are relatively mature and emotionally stable)
we ought to confront visual evidence of the suffering and injustice that are out there,
so that we may obtain a clear and vivid sense of what they are. We ought to do this
precisely because we know that the visual often moves us to moral responses when
statistics and words do not, and our knowledge of human psychology should play a
part in our “handling” of ourselves for moral ends. We should, moreover, occasionally
activate our imaginations and memories to remind ourselves of moral horrors, if this is
necessary to revitalizing our commitment to address them. What is not necessary is that
we constantly keep before us images of suffering that might prove psychologically
crippling [45].
We need to be aware enough of the facts to form personal policies that are true to
our values, but not so vividly aware of them that we cannot continue to function.
Maintaining this kind of awareness is a matter of holding our understanding of suffer-
ing and injustice at arm’s length: being conscious of it without fully confronting its
horror much of the time. In this way we can maintain an awareness of suffering and
moral violations, and be mindful of them in deliberation and conduct, without going
mad or succumbing to despair [46].
What are our duties of awareness in situations when we are not implicated in wrong-
doing, and have virtually no power to affect it? Even here, it seems that a robust (but
not disabling) awareness of suffering is something we should strive for, for three reasons.
First, there is intrinsic value in achieving clarity about our situation. We (ideally)
want to know the truth, even if it is sometimes profoundly depressing. Second, aware-
ness of suffering and injustice seems the least that we should cultivate out of sensitivity
and basic respect for the billions who suffer intensely while others live rich lives of self-
fulfilment. Even if we cannot remedy their suffering, proper respect for the hopeless
calls, at least, for serious reflection on their plight [47].
Finally, clarity about our circumstances can affect our attitudes importantly, even
when it does not change our conduct. It is not only what we do that gives us our moral
identities, but also how we feel and think about the world. Even when we cannot
change our lives to improve the lives of others, we can be moved by awareness of
suffering to attitudes more appropriate to our actual situation than those instilled in us
since childhood. With increased awareness of our global context, we might partially
transcend self-absorption, finding a new humility in reflecting on personal achievements
and a new sense of perspective in facing our day-to-day problems. Such changes in
attitude are not trivial: they make the difference between living one’s life with informed
humility, and living the “same” life with insensitivity and unwitting hubris [48].

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How We Might Change

How might we approach the ideal of morally responsible attentiveness just outlined?
How can we combat our routine and pervasive inattention?
If the “we” here is taken to mean each of us as individuals, the answer may seem
simple: we must cultivate habits of facing the truth and fight our propensities to
inattention. Drawing on the Aristotelian insight that character is formed by habitual
action, we must try to cultivate proper habits of attentiveness.
Simply to say this, though, is unlikely to help individuals in contemporary cultures;
for we must acknowledge that the problem here is not just individual vice, but a social
climate that overwhelmingly fosters that vice. To avoid unrealistic and futile moralism,
we must turn our attention to the broader context. This involves addressing corrupt-
ing social influences such as the deliberate hiding of abusive practices, misleading
advertising, the prevalence of obfuscating language, and widespread antipathy to moral
reproach and discussion. Beyond this, two deeper changes seem crucial to reversing
our chronic inattention.
First, we need to broaden our thinking about personal morality. Specifically, we
need to think about transforming character: about moral self-improvement. Although
early American figures such as Benjamin Franklin attended to and valued such a task,
they are now as likely to be mocked for their efforts as admired. In a culture that seems
obsessed with deliberate personal change when it comes to self-interest (appearance
and health), the absence of attention to moral self-improvement seems especially per-
verse. Such observations can be made of other societies, as well.
The absence of thought about moral transformation plays an important role in self-
deception. Faced with the revelation that an everyday activity violates one’s moral
principles, the agent has three options: (a) discontinue the practice, (b) continue it and
openly acknowledge this as a violation of integrity, or (c) continue the activity but
deceive oneself about (or simply forget) its real nature [49]. Few are willing to embrace
inconsistency; thus many adopt the self-deceived alternative. But why is the first option
— ending one’s involvement in a problematic practice — seldom chosen?
One reason, of course, involves sheer difficulty: it’s hard to change. But another
reason is that the idea of self-cultivation, of moral transformation, is alien to many of
us. Rather than considering incremental steps that could be taken toward an altered
self, many agents assume that they could never change substantially once they have
become adults.
This presumption needs to be overthrown if we are to become more honest and
attentive agents. Without losing humble appreciation of the difficulty of change, we
need to acknowledge its possibility and lifelong desirability. We also need to demystify
the process of moral change, turning our attention from mysterious cases of sudden
conversion to more accessible techniques of self-direction. We need to clarify the acts
and attitudes that are required for personal change.
Secondly, we need to include proper attention to reality in our conception of morally
important virtues. To do that, we need to re-conceptualize awareness so that we regard
it not as a kind of passive reception, but as a matter of action and choice.
In his classic work on self-deception [50], Herbert Fingarette notes that for most
terms relating to consciousness — awareness, attention, noticing, seeing, and so on
— everyday language stresses the passive. Consciousness is thought of as a (passive)

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seeing what is in front of one’s face rather than (an active) looking for what might be
out there. The conventional view is that becoming aware of something is not some-
thing we do; it is something that happens to us.
Fingarette asserts, to the contrary, that consciousness can profitably be seen as an
activity: that one can resolve or refuse to become conscious of something; that one can
do this well or badly, systematically or haphazardly, for good reasons or bad; and that
one can be trained and become skilled in awareness of some things [51].
As Fingarette notes, cultivating skills of attentiveness has not been a traditional
concern in the West. “In Asia and Asia Minor, however, the complex doctrines of
consciousness associated with meditational practice embody millennia of experience in
the cultivation of this skill” [52]. Outsiders cannot, of course, immediately tap into
those millennia of experience and adopt another tradition wholesale. But the existence
of other traditions suggests new directions for us.
We can, moreover, learn from arenas in which we do work on skills of awareness:
when we cultivate aesthetic appreciation, learning to discern aspects of artworks that
we did not see before; or when in psychotherapy we seek awareness of ourselves or
patterns of behaviour [53]. In non-moral realms, the idea of cultivating consciousness
is already accessible to us. This makes its extension to the moral arena more possible
than might at first appear.
Margaret G. Holland [54], drawing on the minority current within recent philo-
sophy that addresses moral perception, suggests ways in which we might enhance
attentiveness.
Holland draws on Simone Weil’s concept of attention as the struggle to keep the
mind from “too quickly latching onto an inadequate or faulty idea,” a feat ideally
accomplished by “suspending our thought, leaving it detached, empty, and ready to
be penetrated by the object . . .” [55]. As Holland explains this notion, one must seek
to “empty one’s mind of content which would distract one from clearly seeing the
object that one seeks to understand,” opening oneself to what is really there [56]. Iris
Murdoch (influenced by Weil) also notes that moral attention “must overcome the
tendencies which make it difficult to see clearly” [57], such as problematic personality
traits and biases that can distort one’s vision. Thus, as Holland puts it,
[m]oral attention moves in two directions, inward toward oneself and outward
toward an aspect of independent reality. It involves a struggle in both direc-
tions: an effort to set aside dispositions which would distort perception and an
effort to see what is independent of oneself [58].
Some may find Holland’s (and Weil’s and Murdoch’s) way of speaking too simple:
there is sometimes no single, unequivocal situation or object that “is really there” to
perceive in moral life, and we cannot keep all of our presuppositions from shaping
what we see. Still, here is real guidance for agents of good will. Most of us know at
least some of our own traits that distort our vision: stereotypes that linger even when
we disapprove of them, desires to avoid discomfort, self-absorption, impatience, and so
on. We also know some of what we must do in order to see things more clearly: we
must, at least, attempt to focus on them — not look away, and not allow distractions to
divert us.
Amélie Rorty adds two useful suggestions. First, “actively pressing for self-critical
evaluation” is a safeguard against evasions that so often extend beyond their

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(legitimately) self-protective functions [59]. Asking hard questions about our motives,
perceptions, practices, and options can sometimes help us to achieve a clearer vision,
even though self-deception and bias may infect our answers to the critical questions
themselves.
Secondly, since self-deception is often socially induced and inattention socially sup-
ported, “the wisest practical course is to be very careful about the company we keep”
[60]. Here, too, self-deception may distort our attempts to be discriminating; but
thinking about our companions is a vast improvement over simply allowing our social
influences to be determined by inertia and chance. Without being overly calculating
about our social lives or abandoning old friends, most of us can at least avoid “char-
ismatic rhetoricians who might mislead us” [61], consort with people who disagree
with us, read (as sympathetically as possible) authors whom we find distasteful, and
(sometimes) seek the company of people we know to be unflinchingly honest even if
we also think they’re rude.
Awareness of bias, receptivity to what is out there, critical self-evaluation, care in
selecting companions: these are bare beginnings of practical instruction in attentive-
ness. But the acknowledgment of fuller awareness as a worthy aim, and the belief that
one can struggle to attain it, would be a huge advance for many. With attention to the
subject of attentiveness itself, more specific guidance would emerge.

Conclusion

Given the connections between proper awareness (on the one hand) and harm-
prevention, autonomy, courage, self-control, compassion, and integrity (on the other),
we ought to encourage the better exercise of consciousness. Let us be clear, though:
our focus should not be moral purity or personal achievement. Ultimately, virtues
of attentiveness are important not for the perfection of our characters, but for the
salvation of the billions of animals and humans who are suffering terribly, and who are
currently being ignored [62].

Kathie Jenni, Department of Philosophy, University of Redlands, 1200 E. Colton Ave.,

Redlands, CA 92373-0999, USA. kathie_ jenni@redlands.edu

NOTES

[1] H. A (1977) Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York, Penguin).
[2] There is an extraordinarily rich literature on conceptual, social, and moral dimensions of self-deception.
See especially J. E (1983) Sour Grapes (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press); H. F
(1969) Self-Deception (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul); M. W. M (ed.) (1986) Self-Deception
and Self-Understanding (Lawrence, Kansas, University of Kansas Press); and B. P. ML and
A. O. R (eds.) (1988) Perspectives on Self-Deception (Berkeley, CA, University of California Press).
My understanding of self-deception has been enriched by these sources and by D. H. J (1989)
Pervasive self-deception, The Southern Journal of Philosophy XXVII, 217–37; J. F. P (1983) Self-
deception and the problem of avoidance, The Southern Journal of Philosophy XXI, 213–27; and W.
W (1990) Self-deception, human emotion, and moral responsibility: toward a pluralistic con-
ceptual scheme, Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 19, 389–410. Since my topic is inattention in its
various forms, I will not address self-deception in all of its complexity, but only the selective attention

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that often advances self-deception. Subsequent references to self-deception, then, refer primarily to that
aspect of it.
[3] My discussion is a partial response to Iris Murdoch’s call for attention to the psychological aspects of
moral agency in philosophical accounts of moral life. I agree with Murdoch and others that these inner
dimensions of moral life are important and worthy of study in their own right, as well as in helping to
provide a full account of how people come to choose the actions they do. For recent discussions of
psychological dimensions of moral agency, see L. A. B (1994) Moral Perception and Particularity
(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press); M. G. H (1998) Touching the weights: moral per-
ception and attention, International Philosophical Quarterly XXXVIII, 299–312; I. M (1971) The
Sovereignty of Good (New York, Schocken Books), (1965) Metaphysics and ethics in D.F. P (ed.)
The Nature of Metaphysics (New York, St. Martin’s Press), and (1956) Vision and choice in morality
in Dreams and Self-Knowledge: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 30, 33–58;
M. N (1990) Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature (New York, Oxford Univer-
sity Press) and (1986) The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cam-
bridge, Cambridge University Press); and A. O. R (1988) Mind in Action: Essays in the Philosophy of
Mind (Boston, Beacon Press).
[4] For more complete descriptions of the treatment of animals on factory farms, see G. E (1997)
Slaughterhouse: the Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry
(Amherst: Prometheus Books); J. M and P. S (1982) Animal Factories (New York, Collier
books); and P. S (1990) Animal Liberation, New Revised Ed. (New York, Avon Books). For
documentary images of the operation of factory farms, see V. S, producer (1981) The Animals
Film, Slick Pics International.
[5] See J. L. L (1990) The rationality of escapism and self-deception, Behavior and Philosophy
Vol. 18, No. 2, 1–20 and A. O. R (1994) User-friendly self-deception, Philosophy 69, 211–28.
[6] E. A. L (1982) Ignorance, self-deception and moral accountability, Journal of Value Inquiry 16,
101–14. The passage quoted is on p. 104.
[7] Ibid, p. 101.
[8] Ibid, pp. 105–6.
[9] A. S (1970) Inside the Third Reich, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York, Macmillan). Some
have doubted Speer’s sincerity in this account: see D.   V (1997) The Good Nazi: The Life and
Lies of Albert Speer (Houghton Mifflin).
[10] Speer op. cit, p. 376.
[11] M. B (1988) What is wrong with self-deception? in B. P. ML and A. O. R (eds.),
Perspectives on Self-Deception (Berkeley: University of California Press), p. 440.
[12] Ibid, loc. cit.
[13] Ibid, loc. cit.
[14] Ibid, pp. 436–7. Think here of the comment, “I could never be a vegetarian.”
[15] Ibid, pp. 437–8.
[16] Ibid, p. 438.
[17] R. D. M (1984) Immorality (Princeton, Princeton University Press), p. 84.
[18] Ibid, p. 86.
[19] Ibid, p. 87.
[20] For a helpful analysis of autonomy, see J. B (1987) Who is the autonomous man? in R. B.
K and R. C. R (eds.) The Virtues: Contemporary Essays on Moral Character (Belmont,
CA, Wadsworth), pp. 204–15.
[21] Autonomy and integrity (which I discuss later) are naturally considered virtues, too. But they seem
sufficiently different from the virtues discussed here (courage, self-control, compassion) to set off as
separate. Both, for example, are second-order characteristics in that they presuppose other values and
consist (in part) in deciding for oneself when and how those values are to be engaged in one’s actions (in
the case of autonomy), or being true to those values in one’s conduct (in the case of integrity). See G.
T and R. G (1981) Integrity, The Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume LV, pp. 143–76.
Inattentiveness itself can be considered a vice, but here I argue that it can be a manifestation of other
vices. These vices (in part) explain the inattention.
[22] Benson op. cit., p. 208.
[23] Ibid, pp. 213–14.
[24] Ibid, p. 214.

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[25] M, op. cit., p. 111. Emphasis added.

[26] Ibid, p. 91. Emphasis added. See also A. O. R (1988) Where does the akratic break take place? in
Mind in Action: Essays in the Philosophy of Mind (Boston: Beacon Press).
[27] M (1984) notes that “we can fail to exercise self-control . . . by failing . . . to ensure that our resolve is
not . . . eroded over time because we become preoccupied with other concerns and neglect to remind
ourselves of what is most important. . . .” (p. 123) This point can be extended beyond our resolve to act
in a certain way to include, also, our confidence in a moral judgment itself.
[28] See G. W (1977) Skepticism about weakness of will, The Philosophical Review 86, pp. 316–39.
[29] M, op. cit., pp. 132–34.
[30] Ibid, p. 132.
[31] L. B (1987) Compassion, in R. B. K and R. C. R (eds.) The Virtues (Belmont, CA,
Wadsworth), pp. 229–36. The passage quoted is on p. 233.
[32] Ibid, pp. 233–34.
[33] See F. S (1987) Statistical norms and moral attributions in F S (ed.) Respons-
ibility, Character, and the Emotions: New Essays in Moral Psychology (Cambridge, Cambridge University
Press), pp. 308–15.
[34] See J. K (1983) Constancy and purity, Mind XCII, pp. 499–518; L. MF (1992) Integrity, in
J. D (ed.) Ethics and Personality: Essays in Moral Psychology (Chicago, The University of Chicago
Press); and G. T and R. G (1981) Integrity, The Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume
LV, pp. 143–76.
[35] T and G, op. cit., p. 151.
[36] MF, op. cit., pp. 84–8. See also D. A. P (1987) Virtue and self-deception, The Southern
Journal of Philosophy XXV, pp. 549–57.
[37] But this judgment must be tempered by awareness of social circumstances in the way that judgments
about deficient compassion must be. (See note 33.) I discuss the bearing of social context on duties of
attentiveness again in the next section.
[38] See L (1990), cited in note 5, for a discussion of related arguments.
[39] R (1994, op. cit.), p. 225. Rorty asks the question about self-deception, in particular.
[40] See H, op. cit., The passage quoted is on p. 305.
[41] See R. B (1992) The animal welfare issue and personal integrity in School of Humanities
and Languages, The Ear: 10 Years After (Irvine, CA, Irvine Valley College), pp. 164–75: “. . . [I]t
seems plausible to suppose that, were even a mildly sensitive person to confront the full moral horror of
the world at any given moment . . . he would succumb to a profound despair, perhaps leaving him
without a will to continue with his own life-projects or with any moral projects.” (p. 175) Emphasis in
original.
[42] The second proviso (power to affect a situation) often requires attentiveness to violations of values by
our loved ones when we have the ability to influence them, but I will not pursue this implication here. I
will also set aside obligations of attentiveness that arise from membership in historically or currently
oppressive groups.
[43] The “upstream-downstream” analysis advocated by environmentalists involves attention not just to the
history of a product (what natural resources were used and what pollution generated in the course of its
production), but also to its future (how it will be disposed of when discarded). Morally responsible
attention would seem to require diachronic awareness of the precursors to and effects of one’s actions,
among other things.
[44] See S, op. cit.
[45] For a related account, see J. M (1999) Suffering and Moral Responsibility (New York, Oxford
University Press), pp. 105–6. Mayerfeld notes that “we can come close to knowing our duty [with
respect to addressing suffering] . . . if we now and then make an effort to behold the true nature of
suffering, make a mental note of its utter moral horror, and then, after our perception fades, understand
that suffering is a much worse thing than we can presently recollect. . . . We can . . . refer by our memory
to some past moment in which we were vividly and uncomfortably aware of what suffering is” and use
the memory of the “powerful need and anxiety to banish that suffering” experienced at those moments
to attain an adequate understanding of our obligations. This is part of Mayerfeld’s thesis that “[w]e
need to become aware of, and to compensate for, the habitual denial of suffering.” He offers a superb
analysis of the mechanisms used by moral agents and cultural institutions to “shield ourselves from the
perception of other people’s suffering.” (See especially pp. 101–7.) I think that Mayerfeld’s points can be

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extended to awareness of morally problematic situations that don’t involve suffering (such as oppression),
as well.
[46] See B, op. cit., p. 170 for a helpful discussion of the distinction between thinking about something
and being mindful of it.
[47] This point applies, too, to those who acknowledge global suffering, but deny that it makes moral
demands on us when it lies outside the scope of our immediate family, circle of friends, community, or
nation. For authors who argue for a substantial obligation to help the suffering irrespective of such
traditional limits, see N. S. C (1987) On Sharing Fate, Ethics and Action Series (Philadelphia,
Temple University Press); M, op. cit.; P. S (1972) Famine, affluence, and morality, Philo-
sophy and Public Affairs 1, pp. 229– 43; and P. U (1996) Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion
of Innocence (New York, Oxford University Press).
[48] For discussions of the importance of inner moral life, see the works cited in note 3.
[49] See F, op. cit., pp. 138–9.
[50] F, op. cit.
[51] Ibid, pp. 36– 45.
[52] Ibid, p. 44.
[53] Ibid, pp. 44–5.
[54] H, op. cit., pp. 299–312.
[55] S. W (1951) Reflections on the right use of school studies with a view to the love of God in Waiting
for God, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York, Harper Colophon), p. 111; quoted in H op. cit.,
p. 306.
[56] H, op. cit., p. 307.
[57] M (1971, op. cit.), pp. 16–37. The quoted phrase is Holland’s, in Holland, op. cit.,
p. 308.
[58] H, op. cit., p. 309.
[59] R (1994, op. cit.), p. 227.
[60] Ibid, p. 227.
[61] Ibid, p. 227.
[62] Parts of this essay were presented as the Third Annual Jameson Associates’ Lecture at the University
of Redlands in April 1996; and for the American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division) meetings
in March 1997, the Moral and Political Philosophy Society of Orange County in October 1997, the
California State University, San Bernardino Philosophy Symposium in May 1997, and the Western
Social Science Association meetings in March 1999. I’d like to thank the participants in these forums for
many useful comments and suggestions. I am particularly grateful to Lawrence Finsen, Mike W. Martin,
Sarah Williams Holtman, and Patricia Wasielewski for encouragement and insightful critiques.

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