say what you will, they at least are chicken friendly ethicists:
> However, one issue on which ethicists not only held stronger normative attitudes but also reported better corresponding moral behaviors was vegetarianism.
If I were hiring someone to do a job requiring major ethical judgment, exposure to academic thinking on ethics would be immediately disqualifying. My experience is that it is corrupting: it equips a student with a vast array of theories they can use to justify anything.
In the same sense that learning about cognitive biases can equip people to become even more entrenched in their own beliefs. Being able to claim that others are falling prey to "confirmation bias" whenever confronted with evidence that conflicts with their own preconceptions does a lot to shore up the Semmelweiss reflex. It does make one think about how much education actually helps people think better; the simple heuristic of "more learning = better" doesn't seem to hold up to real scrutiny. I would hypothesize that some forms of pedagogy would instead calcify incorrect ideas in people's heads, and predicting which would do that is nontrivial considering we don't actually know much about why people learn in the first place.
If you are not interested in the truth, every theory becomes a weapon to hide it. This is why instead of teaching theories you have to teach the love of truth — coincidentally that is the meaning of the word philosophy.
I think it's hard to know whether you're interested in the truth. Even if you think you've scrupulously cleared away all the thickets of biases and prejudices, there are probably more still there, hiding in all the corners you've turned away from.
It's true that all of us have a lifetime of work to do in that area, but I think the grandparent posted is referring to the people who cling to and consciously nurture biases.
Maybe my standards are too low but these days I'm excited to talk to anyone who even has a passing interest in truth for its own sake, no matter what the quality of their inquiry is.
If you love truth you will know those hidden corners exist and be alert to emerging evidence of biases and prejudices. There is the story which I suppose is true, of the professor who sat through a lecture and understood that the work being described had demolished the basis for his own work of the last twenty years. Rather than despairing he stood up and congratulated the speaker on discovering a better theory.
It is harder to use ethics to lie to yourself or others. Ethics are a tool that can be used to justify heinous behaviour, or to shine a light on how your daily choices could be made better, all depending on those wielding the tool.
Not to fall into exactly the trap that you set, but there is a survivorship bias at play here.
If you are wholly committed to young earth creationism, many college classes will be an unpleasant confrontation from start to finish and very little of your existing knowledge will help you pass classes even if you want to play along. People who come to college with more mainstream ideas will have an easier time and be more likely to succeed.
And it's not entirely surprising that graduates have a bit of a calcified worldview. If you read Marx without dropping out to join a revolution and were able to deal with a lot of compelling but conflicting arguments in whatever field you studied it's going to take quite a bit for you to radically change your mind.
That is common human behavior, not corruption of what would be 'good' behavior otherwise.
The only difference to academics is that normal people don't try to create a consistent theory. We merely pick from whatever is available in to our moralistic toolbox.
So people without any exposure to 'academic' discussion of ethics, are not exposed to any other types of ethical thought that couldn't be equally 'corrupting'? .. Do you really think that there is some pure un-corrupted state that a person could be in that would allow them to make perfect ethical judgements, that are not motivated by any instinct to justify something? I would put it to you that we are all deeply marinated in the sauce of the values and thoughts, and ways of reasoning of the societies and cultures we are raised in. Academic study gives people a tool to reflect on these things and make more careful judgements. In come cases it is as simple as giving people a shared vocabulary to talk about things they notice in every day life.
I agree, the comment you replied to supports the "noble idiot" bias a lot of people have; that the best moral judgements are those without thought and from the purity of naive instinct.
Moral instincts are correct on average because they reflect the bulk morality of the society that the person was raised in.
While "informed" ethics can be imported from societies with other ethical frameworks that do not fit the desired ethics of this society. Worse yet people might think it's superior in some way just because it's educated and reasoned.
Why does it matter? We are talking about the fact that ethicists are dangerous because they use non-local moral frameworks and intellectualizing to justify locally immoral actions.
Why doesn't matter if local morality of any given society is moral or immoral when judged in a framework of some other culture?
Every society is immoral from the point of view of some other society.
> We are talking about the fact that ethicists are dangerous because they use non-local moral frameworks
Dangerous? This discussion sounds a lot like the trial of Socrates. Would you put ethicists to death for "corrupting the youth"?
> Why doesn't matter if local morality of any given society is moral or immoral when judged in a framework of some other culture?
This sounds like anything-goes relativism. I've been trying to avoid invoking Godwin's law...
Anyway, societies change. They evolve. You apparently only want pollsters, but pollsters only reflect current opinion. Is it wrong for moral views to change?
I was referring to "Why would you assume that the society a person was raised in is moral?". Imho it doesn't matter if you deem that society as moral or immoral because it's a relative thing. What matters is how moral the behavior is in the moral framework of this particular society. And ethicists are straying for that and picking and choosing their own imported moral frameworks that let them justify any locally immoral deeds.
> Would you put ethicists to death for "corrupting the youth"?
Why make up the crime? I'd rather accuse them of corrupting academic integrity by faking research, like the recent examples have proven. I'd punish them accordingly and adjust expectations about their future behavior. As it is currently done.
> This sounds like anything-goes relativism.
Details of morality are obviously relative. They develop along with societies that use them. They differ.
> I've been trying to avoid invoking Godwin's law...
I'll do it for you then. If nazis have won, you'd have a bit different moral framework than you do and you'd be as sure about its universal correctness as you are now about yours.
Did you notice how when you read history, every time there was a conflict the good guys eventually won? Is that an amazing coincidence? Or do the winners decide who's good?
> Is it wrong for moral views to change?
It's perfectly normal and necessary, but we don't talk about that. Just that ethicist, due to their education are a bit too crafty about justifying stuff that current morality labels as bad.
> If nazis have won, you'd have a bit different moral framework than you do and you'd be as sure about its universal correctness as you are now about yours.
There wasn't universal agreement about Nazi ideology even in Nazi Germany. They just violently suppressed any dissent.
> Did you notice how when you read history, every time there was a conflict the good guys eventually won?
Engineering undergrads are now required to take an ethics course at the university I studied at. Clearly they are all immediately disqualified from STEM hiring.
I think what's actually going on is people in industry just take a dim view of academic liberals, and so use a crypto anti-intellectual argument to rationalize against people with academic backgrounds.
Sure, there is a risk that the more one knows, the more they might use knowledge to rationalize. Academics (yes, academics) have pointed out this problem, from knowledge about psychology to knowledge about politics (and probably some dead philosopher has mentioned this issue as well!). But that is a risk and not a disqualification.
You can say the same thing about religion; in fact, religions that tell you to ask for forgiveness are not only guilty of this, they don’t even allow one to consider the basis of their morality may be wrong.
This largely agrees with my own observations- I find that the benefit of knowing about ethical frameworks, societal issues, biases and fallacies ends at being aware of and taking them into consideration, and past that rapidly devolves into justifying increasingly contorted worldviews.
You can see this in any and every ideology-centric group no matter how moral it actually is, from the unequivocally good like feminism, all the way to incels.
The main reason people dig deeper into the underlying theory is motivated cognition, not desire for open-mindedness.
I don't think that's incompatible with feminism. I think feminism just opposes putting up gender barriers of any kind in the way of any activity despite of what anyone thinks about who's optimized for what.
I mean the discussion is about what constitutes a barrier, and how to prevent them, but the general sentiment that's still the core of the idea is unequivocally good.
"Feminism" means different things to different people. If you use "feminism" as a synonym for "gender egalitarianism", then that's not entirely incorrect, but you are picking a fight that will be full of straw man arguments, because other people use the word differently.
Even egalitarianism isn't necessarily an unequivocal good, it depends on your goal function. Individual self actualization isn't universally accepted as an appropriate goal for society, neither is the idea that all people are born equal.
(I happen to share those values but I know people and entire societies with belief systems that don't.)
I am a humanist. Women are neither lesser nor greater than men, just as the yin is not lesser than the yang or vice versa. Women and men are not the same--our bodies are undeniably different. There are strains of feminism which blame men collectively for all ills in society. I do not view such ideology as "unequivocally good."
> There are strains of feminism which blame men collectively for all ills in society
I find that these views are spread not so much by strains of feminism or anyone seeking to improve society, as by the aforementioned people using feminist frameworks to justify their own takes on gender essentialism and bigotry.
I don't consider this feminism since it does nothing to improve anything for anyone, but yes, the lack of intolerance for misandry among feminist spaces is one of my big issues with it.
You can't really talk about these things very rigidly. Otherwise you'd have to conclude that any religion is only as good as the worst inhumane madman that adopted it as his motivation.
I am simply observing that "feminism" is unworthy of the label "unequivocally good". I agree that "religion" is also not "unequivocally good". And one doesn't need to invoke Torquemada to make that claim; religion (or any -ism) imposes rules/structures on society that incur complex trade-offs, such that one can't say they are wholly good 100% of the time.
One is Scot by being a resident of Scotland. One is a feminist by engaging with feminist theory and/or activism, mainly in the context of trying to shift attitudes away from misogyny. Using feminist lingo to justify misandry is no more feminism than using awareness of cognitive biases to troll people online is philosophy.
The issue, I think, is that the word "Feminism" isn't used as having a consistent meaning?
Like, it is kind of a coalitional word, I think. Of course, there are a number of ideas in common amongst the various ways it has been used,
and among those ideas held in common, are "women often experience unfair disadvantages due to how women are treated compared to men." and "that should be addressed/remedied in some way.",
and these statements are true.
But, the word "feminism" is not understood to refer solely to those statements held in common. If it was, there would be no such thing as different "waves" of feminism.
Rather, the word "feminism", at least often, is used to refer to "those claims made/supported by a coalition of people calling themselves "feminists".
(Personally, I try to avoid actually using the word "feminism", rather than referring to it, because I think that thinking of it as the name of "a thing" risks confusion which I'd rather avoid?)
Purely anecdotal, but I choose not to read the literature on the ethics of animal exploitation because I was still eating meat. But I decided to take the plunge, and now I cannot go back to eating meat.
I don't know if I'd go so far as to disqualify someone, but I agree with the basic point you're making.
What you've described happens with religious people of a certain type as well. Sometimes they can adopt a legalistic approach to right and wrong that allows them to do things that are very much against the spirit of a teaching, by claiming they meet the letter of the law (or rule). Other times religious people take the position that the end justifies the means -- that their moral mission is so important that it's OK if they cut corners, sometimes very serious ones, along the way.
I've never known what to make of SBF's parents, especially his mom, a scholar who has championed the idea of effective altruism. I don't know how much his parents knew about what was going on at FTX, but they seemed to benefit from the wealth the company threw off while FTX was at its peak.
On one hand, it seems reasonable to me for parents to support their child, even or perhaps even especially when the child is being prosecuted. I don't know the truth of anything that happened. But it seems that SBF's defense is probably made up of lies. If that's the case, is it OK for his parents to sit on the sidelines and support SBF while he continues to lie?
I am reminded of that Berkeley ethics professor, Clanton, who snuck up behind people at various protests and struck them in the head with a bike lock, seven times. This was not at just one event, either. He did this at multiple events. Even got one of his targets wrong, hit one of the people on his own side. Just three years probation. Three felony assault charges were dropped. One can only imagine the ethical gymnastics there. All of the steps, however, I've heard laid out, so he need merely assemble them. First, you classify a bunch of people as "Nazis." Second, you convince yourself that their speech is violence. Third, you're nobly defending people from the depredations of the violent, and if that means skulking up from behind, well, that's just being practical.
Reading the study (https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2019.158...) the questions don't sound overly morally charged. They're certainly what I'd imagine a normal person may find moral questions, but are otherwise fairly middling in terms of moral impact. Other than vegetarianism, I'd say many of the don't have moral weight, at least not how they were asked. And even if you had considered them moral, it would only be from a deontological, or possibly virtue, ethics perspective.
The behaviour is a little more damning, but they only show evidence from two different scenarios. One of those scenarios had to do with charity and once again I feel like donating to charity is not overly morally charged. And if it is, it's certainly not the way they presented it.
I'd like to see a self-controlled case series design here, so we can isolate the effect of studying ethics and working as an ethicist from the choice to do so.
For instance, if I gathered together experts on sobriety I suspect the group would include many very heavy drinkers. That's because most people don't interact with the concept of sobriety unless they have a problem with their drinking.
Maybe these ethicists took up the field because they were struggling to behave ethically, and so becoming individuals with a normal amount of flaws is a major improvement.
That makes as much sense as assuming structural engineers are most likely people who have
experienced infrastructural problems before opting for a career.
> empirically investigated if philosophy professors engaged with ethics on a professional basis behave any morally better or, at least, more consistently with their expressed values than do non-ethicist professors
The first investigation is just begging the question. The whole point of moral philosophy is that how to live is an open question.
The second investigation sounds more interesting, but it doesn’t prove much either. ”Knowing that” and ”knowing how” are different. Doctors smoke more than the baseline.
I have observed a similar effect for constitutional lawyers. There are many whose ethics make it abundantly clear that they pursued the field not out of a desire to defend rights but how to justify abuses and find loopholes.
Becoming ethical, letting reason permeate throughout one's life, is a job for the individual.
If someone deigns to explain to me the moral implications of this and that, I have to ask - what special abilities do they have? How do they know the truth better than I do?
If someone believes they know what another adult ought to do, that, to me, would be an indication that they don't really have much of a clue at all!
Anyone who has studied in the area knows that there's self-sorting by field, which runs, from most to least conservative: Ethics < political philosophy < political theory. Most 'activist' philosophers are in politics and sociology departments, not philosophy departments. In both cases the tendency runs from the most abstract and rationalist, to the most concrete and political.
The study also begs the question about what is and is not moral. It finds that professional ethicists judge that not keeping in contact with one's mother is less morally reprehensible than do other academics. And, on the strength of this and other, similar judgements, conclude that non-ethicist academics have more stringent moral beliefs. Well - maybe the ethicists are right? Whether greater 'leniency' or 'stringency' is appropriate in any given case is relative to one's ethical beliefs, not a scientific given to be assumed at the outset of the study.
> Anyone who has studied in the area knows that there's self-sorting by field, which runs, from most to least conservative: Ethics < political philosophy < political theory. Most 'activist' philosophers are in politics and sociology departments, not philosophy departments.
Citation needed. I have studied in the area, with multiple degrees in philosophy and political science, but I don't know what you claim that I know.
There's an old joke about a professor of moral philosophy caught cheating on his wife. When asked how his conduct suits his professional title, he shrugs and says, "And if I taught mathematics, would I have to be a triangle?"
56 comments
[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 112 ms ] thread> However, one issue on which ethicists not only held stronger normative attitudes but also reported better corresponding moral behaviors was vegetarianism.
(from the article summary)
Maybe my standards are too low but these days I'm excited to talk to anyone who even has a passing interest in truth for its own sake, no matter what the quality of their inquiry is.
A) know ethics
B) have a love for the truth
It is harder to use ethics to lie to yourself or others. Ethics are a tool that can be used to justify heinous behaviour, or to shine a light on how your daily choices could be made better, all depending on those wielding the tool.
If you are wholly committed to young earth creationism, many college classes will be an unpleasant confrontation from start to finish and very little of your existing knowledge will help you pass classes even if you want to play along. People who come to college with more mainstream ideas will have an easier time and be more likely to succeed.
And it's not entirely surprising that graduates have a bit of a calcified worldview. If you read Marx without dropping out to join a revolution and were able to deal with a lot of compelling but conflicting arguments in whatever field you studied it's going to take quite a bit for you to radically change your mind.
The only difference to academics is that normal people don't try to create a consistent theory. We merely pick from whatever is available in to our moralistic toolbox.
While "informed" ethics can be imported from societies with other ethical frameworks that do not fit the desired ethics of this society. Worse yet people might think it's superior in some way just because it's educated and reasoned.
Why would you assume that the society a person was raised in is moral? It's demonstrably and indisputably false in many cases.
Why doesn't matter if local morality of any given society is moral or immoral when judged in a framework of some other culture?
Every society is immoral from the point of view of some other society.
Why does what matter, morality??
> We are talking about the fact that ethicists are dangerous because they use non-local moral frameworks
Dangerous? This discussion sounds a lot like the trial of Socrates. Would you put ethicists to death for "corrupting the youth"?
> Why doesn't matter if local morality of any given society is moral or immoral when judged in a framework of some other culture?
This sounds like anything-goes relativism. I've been trying to avoid invoking Godwin's law...
Anyway, societies change. They evolve. You apparently only want pollsters, but pollsters only reflect current opinion. Is it wrong for moral views to change?
I was referring to "Why would you assume that the society a person was raised in is moral?". Imho it doesn't matter if you deem that society as moral or immoral because it's a relative thing. What matters is how moral the behavior is in the moral framework of this particular society. And ethicists are straying for that and picking and choosing their own imported moral frameworks that let them justify any locally immoral deeds.
> Would you put ethicists to death for "corrupting the youth"?
Why make up the crime? I'd rather accuse them of corrupting academic integrity by faking research, like the recent examples have proven. I'd punish them accordingly and adjust expectations about their future behavior. As it is currently done.
> This sounds like anything-goes relativism.
Details of morality are obviously relative. They develop along with societies that use them. They differ.
> I've been trying to avoid invoking Godwin's law...
I'll do it for you then. If nazis have won, you'd have a bit different moral framework than you do and you'd be as sure about its universal correctness as you are now about yours.
Did you notice how when you read history, every time there was a conflict the good guys eventually won? Is that an amazing coincidence? Or do the winners decide who's good?
> Is it wrong for moral views to change?
It's perfectly normal and necessary, but we don't talk about that. Just that ethicist, due to their education are a bit too crafty about justifying stuff that current morality labels as bad.
There wasn't universal agreement about Nazi ideology even in Nazi Germany. They just violently suppressed any dissent.
> Did you notice how when you read history, every time there was a conflict the good guys eventually won?
No, I think I read a different history than you.
I think what's actually going on is people in industry just take a dim view of academic liberals, and so use a crypto anti-intellectual argument to rationalize against people with academic backgrounds.
Sure, there is a risk that the more one knows, the more they might use knowledge to rationalize. Academics (yes, academics) have pointed out this problem, from knowledge about psychology to knowledge about politics (and probably some dead philosopher has mentioned this issue as well!). But that is a risk and not a disqualification.
You can see this in any and every ideology-centric group no matter how moral it actually is, from the unequivocally good like feminism, all the way to incels.
The main reason people dig deeper into the underlying theory is motivated cognition, not desire for open-mindedness.
I mean the discussion is about what constitutes a barrier, and how to prevent them, but the general sentiment that's still the core of the idea is unequivocally good.
Anything else?
"Feminism" means different things to different people. If you use "feminism" as a synonym for "gender egalitarianism", then that's not entirely incorrect, but you are picking a fight that will be full of straw man arguments, because other people use the word differently.
(I happen to share those values but I know people and entire societies with belief systems that don't.)
I find that these views are spread not so much by strains of feminism or anyone seeking to improve society, as by the aforementioned people using feminist frameworks to justify their own takes on gender essentialism and bigotry.
I don't consider this feminism since it does nothing to improve anything for anyone, but yes, the lack of intolerance for misandry among feminist spaces is one of my big issues with it.
This is called the "No True Scotsman" fallacy. ("No true feminist would be intolerant or misandrous.")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
I will agree that feminism is "unequivocally good" if we first define it thusly then discount every feminist who is less-than-good :)
Like, it is kind of a coalitional word, I think. Of course, there are a number of ideas in common amongst the various ways it has been used,
and among those ideas held in common, are "women often experience unfair disadvantages due to how women are treated compared to men." and "that should be addressed/remedied in some way.",
and these statements are true.
But, the word "feminism" is not understood to refer solely to those statements held in common. If it was, there would be no such thing as different "waves" of feminism.
Rather, the word "feminism", at least often, is used to refer to "those claims made/supported by a coalition of people calling themselves "feminists".
(Personally, I try to avoid actually using the word "feminism", rather than referring to it, because I think that thinking of it as the name of "a thing" risks confusion which I'd rather avoid?)
What you've described happens with religious people of a certain type as well. Sometimes they can adopt a legalistic approach to right and wrong that allows them to do things that are very much against the spirit of a teaching, by claiming they meet the letter of the law (or rule). Other times religious people take the position that the end justifies the means -- that their moral mission is so important that it's OK if they cut corners, sometimes very serious ones, along the way.
I've never known what to make of SBF's parents, especially his mom, a scholar who has championed the idea of effective altruism. I don't know how much his parents knew about what was going on at FTX, but they seemed to benefit from the wealth the company threw off while FTX was at its peak.
On one hand, it seems reasonable to me for parents to support their child, even or perhaps even especially when the child is being prosecuted. I don't know the truth of anything that happened. But it seems that SBF's defense is probably made up of lies. If that's the case, is it OK for his parents to sit on the sidelines and support SBF while he continues to lie?
So does a textbook or two read in their free time. I don't understand this rationale at all.
The behaviour is a little more damning, but they only show evidence from two different scenarios. One of those scenarios had to do with charity and once again I feel like donating to charity is not overly morally charged. And if it is, it's certainly not the way they presented it.
For instance, if I gathered together experts on sobriety I suspect the group would include many very heavy drinkers. That's because most people don't interact with the concept of sobriety unless they have a problem with their drinking.
Maybe these ethicists took up the field because they were struggling to behave ethically, and so becoming individuals with a normal amount of flaws is a major improvement.
The first investigation is just begging the question. The whole point of moral philosophy is that how to live is an open question.
The second investigation sounds more interesting, but it doesn’t prove much either. ”Knowing that” and ”knowing how” are different. Doctors smoke more than the baseline.
If someone deigns to explain to me the moral implications of this and that, I have to ask - what special abilities do they have? How do they know the truth better than I do?
If someone believes they know what another adult ought to do, that, to me, would be an indication that they don't really have much of a clue at all!
Anyone who has studied in the area knows that there's self-sorting by field, which runs, from most to least conservative: Ethics < political philosophy < political theory. Most 'activist' philosophers are in politics and sociology departments, not philosophy departments. In both cases the tendency runs from the most abstract and rationalist, to the most concrete and political.
The study also begs the question about what is and is not moral. It finds that professional ethicists judge that not keeping in contact with one's mother is less morally reprehensible than do other academics. And, on the strength of this and other, similar judgements, conclude that non-ethicist academics have more stringent moral beliefs. Well - maybe the ethicists are right? Whether greater 'leniency' or 'stringency' is appropriate in any given case is relative to one's ethical beliefs, not a scientific given to be assumed at the outset of the study.
Citation needed. I have studied in the area, with multiple degrees in philosophy and political science, but I don't know what you claim that I know.