The Moral Behavior of Ethicists: Peer Opinion

(in draft)

If philosophical moral reflection tends to improve moral behavior, it seems to follow that professional ethicists will, on average, behave morally better than non-ethicists.  One potential source of insight into the moral behavior of ethicists is the opinion of other philosophers about their behavior.  At the 2007 Pacific Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association, we used chocolate to entice 277 passersby to complete anonymous questionnaires without knowing the topic of those questionnaires in advance.  Version I of the questionnaire asked respondents to compare, in general, the moral behavior of ethicists to that of philosophers not specializing in ethics and to non-academics of similar social background.  Version II asked respondents similar questions about the moral behavior of the ethics specialist in their department whose name comes next in alphabetical order after their own.  Both versions asked control questions about specialists in metaphysics and epistemology.  The majority of respondents expressed the view that ethicists do not, on average, behave better than non-ethicists.  While ethicists tended to avoid saying either that ethicists in general (Version I) or individual arbitrarily selected ethicists (Version II) behave worse than non-ethicists, non-ethicists expressed that pessimistic view about as often as they expressed the view that ethicists behave better.

Click here to view this document as a PDF file: The Moral Behavior of Ethicists: Peer Opinion (October 31, 2007).

Or here to view it as an HTM file: The Moral Behavior of Ethicists: Peer Opinion (October 31, 2007).

Or email eschwitz at domain: ucr.edu for a copy of this paper.

Return to Eric Schwitzgebel's homepage.