New Draft Essay: The Moral Behavior of Ethicists: Peer Opinion (with Joshua Rust)
is here. Josh and I went to a meeting of the American Philosophical Association last spring and distributed questionnaires asking philosophers their opinion about the moral behavior of ethicists compared to non-ethicist philosophers and compared to non-academics of similar social background. The summary result (announced previously here) is this: The majority opinion among philosophers is that ethicists do not behave better. Ethicists themselves were about evenly divided between saying that ethicists behave better and saying they behave the same. Non-ethicists were about evenly divided between saying that ethicists behave better, the same, and worse.
In conversation, I've found that most philosophers seem untroubled by the view that ethicists are not better behaved than non-ethicists. But I think that if this is true it should be troubling -- both normatively and empirically!
Normatively, because it seems that philosophical reflection about ethical matters should have an impact on one's actual morally behavior. And empirically because it seems that people who devote their careers to ethics should at least be more inclined than average to think that morality is important (and thus worth acting on) and should find violations of their favorite principles more salient than do non-ethicists.
Comments on the essay gratefully welcomed! Email me.