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Are ethicists any more likely to pay their registration fees at professional meetings
- Economics & Philosophy
, 2013
"... Lists of paid registrants at Pacific Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association from 2006-2008 were compared to lists of people appearing as presenters or chairs on the meeting program those same years. These were years in which fee payment depended primarily on an honor system rath ..."
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Lists of paid registrants at Pacific Division meetings of the American Philosophical Association from 2006-2008 were compared to lists of people appearing as presenters or chairs on the meeting program those same years. These were years in which fee payment depended primarily on an honor system rather than on enforcement. 74 % of ethicist participants and 76 % of non-ethicist participants appear to have paid their meeting registration fees, not a statistically significant difference. This finding of no difference survives scrutiny for several possible confounds. Thus, professional ethicists seem no less likely to free ride in this context than do philosophers not specializing in ethics. These data fit with other recent findings suggesting that on average professional ethicists are no morally better behaved than are professors not specializing in ethics. Key words: ethics, morality, moral cognition, cooperation, free riding Abstract word count: 128 words Manuscript word count: 2,909 words plus references and one figure
Book Review Altruism in Humans
"... Batson’s book is a summary of his impressive research career investigating altruism and more specifically the claim that empathic concern is an important motivator for altruistic behavior. Years ago he wrote another book about the topic, The Altruism Question (Batson, 1991). In the current book, Bat ..."
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Batson’s book is a summary of his impressive research career investigating altruism and more specifically the claim that empathic concern is an important motivator for altruistic behavior. Years ago he wrote another book about the topic, The Altruism Question (Batson, 1991). In the current book, Batson describes further developments in altruism research by himself and others and reflects on what is not (yet) known. It is not a book about evolutionary psychology per se but it does have implications for altruism research from an evolutionary perspective. Furthermore, by using an evolutionary perspective one could interpret some aspects of Batson’s findings differently.
The Behavior of Ethicists for the Blackwell Companion to Experimental Philosophy
, 2014
"... The Behavior of Ethicists 1. Introduction. Arguably, one of the aims of studying ethics is moral self-improvement. In ancient philosophy, moral self-improvement is often treated as the foremost aim for the student of ethics – for example in Aristotle (4th c. BCE/1962), Confucius (5th c. BCE/2003), a ..."
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The Behavior of Ethicists 1. Introduction. Arguably, one of the aims of studying ethics is moral self-improvement. In ancient philosophy, moral self-improvement is often treated as the foremost aim for the student of ethics – for example in Aristotle (4th c. BCE/1962), Confucius (5th c. BCE/2003), and Epictetus (2nd c.
The Self-Reported Moral Behavior of Ethics Professors
, 2011
"... We examine the self-reported moral attitudes and moral behavior of 198 ethics professors, 208 non-ethicist philosophers, and 167 professors in departments other than philosophy on eight moral issues: academic society membership, voting, staying in touch with one’s mother, vegetarianism, organ and bl ..."
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We examine the self-reported moral attitudes and moral behavior of 198 ethics professors, 208 non-ethicist philosophers, and 167 professors in departments other than philosophy on eight moral issues: academic society membership, voting, staying in touch with one’s mother, vegetarianism, organ and blood donation, responsiveness to student emails, charitable giving, and honesty in responding to survey questionnaires. On some issues we also had direct behavioral measures that we could compare with self-report. Ethicists expressed somewhat more stringent normative attitudes on some issues, such as vegetarianism and charitable donation. However, on no issue did ethicists show significantly better behavior than the two comparison groups. Our findings on attitude-behavior consistency were mixed: Ethicists showed the strongest relationship between behavior and expressed moral attitude regarding voting but the weakest regarding charitable donation.
The Moral Behavior of Ethicists and the Power of Reason
, 2013
"... Professional ethicists behave no morally better, on average, than do other professors. At least that’s what we have found in a series of empirical studies that we will summarize below. Our results create a prima facie challenge for a certain picture of the relationship between intellectual reasoning ..."
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Professional ethicists behave no morally better, on average, than do other professors. At least that’s what we have found in a series of empirical studies that we will summarize below. Our results create a prima facie challenge for a certain picture of the relationship between intellectual reasoning and moral behavior – a picture on which explicit, intellectual cognition has substantial power to change the moral opinions of the reasoner and thereby to change the reasoner’s moral behavior. Call this picture the Power of Reason view. One alternative view has been prominently defended by Jonathan Haidt. We might call it the Weakness of Reason view, or more colorfully the Rational Tail view, after the headline metaphor of Haidt’s seminal 2001 article, “The emotional dog and its rational tail ” (in Haidt’s later 2012 book, the emotional dog becomes an “intuitive dog”). According to the Rational Tail view (which comes in different degrees of strength), emotion or intuition drives moral opinion and moral behavior, and explicit forms of intellectual cognition function mainly post-hoc, to justify and socially communicate conclusions that flow from emotion or intuition. Haidt argues that our empirical results favor his view (2012, p. 89). After all, if intellectual styles of moral reasoning don’t detectably improve the behavior even of professional ethicists who build their careers on expertise in such reasoning,
Take My Advice—I Am Not Following It: Ad Hominem Arguments as Legitimate Rebuttals to Appeals to Authority
"... Abstract: In this paper, I argue that ad hominem arguments are not always fallacious. More explicitly, in certain cases of practical reasoning, the cir-cumstances of a person are relevant to whether or not the conclusion should be accepted. This occurs, I suggest, when a person gives advice to other ..."
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Abstract: In this paper, I argue that ad hominem arguments are not always fallacious. More explicitly, in certain cases of practical reasoning, the cir-cumstances of a person are relevant to whether or not the conclusion should be accepted. This occurs, I suggest, when a person gives advice to others or prescribes certain courses of action but fails to follow her own advice or act in accordance with her own pre-scriptions. This is not an instance of a fallacious tu quoque provided that such circumstantial ad hominem ar-guments are construed as rebuttals to appeals (administrative) authority (of expertise), or so I argue. Résumé:
Ethicists ’ and Non-Ethicists ’ Responsiveness to Student Emails: Relationships among Expressed Normative Attitude, Self-Described Behavior, and Empirically Observed Behavior
"... Do professional ethicists behave any morally better than do other professors? Do they show any greater consistency between their normative attitudes and their behavior? In response to a survey question, a large majority of professors (83 % of ethicists, 83 % of non-ethicist philosophers, and 85 % of ..."
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Do professional ethicists behave any morally better than do other professors? Do they show any greater consistency between their normative attitudes and their behavior? In response to a survey question, a large majority of professors (83 % of ethicists, 83 % of non-ethicist philosophers, and 85 % of non-philosophers) expressed the view that “not consistently responding to student emails ” is morally bad. A similarly large majority of professors claimed to respond to at least 95 % of student emails. We sent these professors, and others, three emails designed to look like queries from students. Ethicists ’ email response rates were within chance of the other two groups’. Expressed normative view correlated with self-estimated rate of email responsiveness, especially among the ethicists. However, empirically measured email responsiveness was at best weakly correlated with self-estimated email responsiveness; and professors ’ expressed normative attitude was not significantly correlated with empirically measured email responsiveness for any of the three groups. Keywords: attitude-behavior consistency, ethics, experimental philosophy, moral psychology, morality, social psychology
