In a second type of case, the moral disagreement that threatens the possibility of collective moral reasoning consists in divergent beliefs about what is morally salient and what should be counted as a moral principle.
We can ask what we take to be morally salient, whether we appeal to moral principles, and how we deal with conflicting moral considerations.
Martha Nussbaum maintains that one of the central moral skills is the ability to discern morally salient features of one's situation.
For example, on a genetic account, biology determines moral parental status, whereas on an intentional account, biology will be less morally salient.
For the moral reasoner, a crucial task for our capacities of moral recognition is to mark out certain features of a situation as being morally salient.
Intimidation is not the morally salient trait of terrorism (pace Goodin), but it is one of its core traits that cause most of us to condemn the practice.
Only when we are so disposed do we know what is morally called for caring about persons enables us to pick up on what is morally salient (424 25).
To say that certain features are marked out as morally salient is not to imply that the features thus singled out answer to the terms of some general principle or other: we will come to the question of particularism, below.
