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Is there any evidence that "teaching ethics" works? I wouldn't expect it to, but I'd be happy to be wrong. > Viruses, black hat hacking and privacy invasion ar

Is there any evidence that "teaching ethics" works? I wouldn't expect it to, but I'd be happy to be wrong. > Viruses, black hat hacking and privacy invasion are partly due to people in the computer industry not understanding or caring about ethics. Yes, but the breakdown is .1% not understanding and 99.9% not caring (which typically takes the form of rationalization).

WillPostForFood 9y ago
You can have effective or ineffective teaching of ethics, but you can teach it. We aren't born ethical creatures, it is a learned behavior.
- jjoonathan 9y ago
  Kids learn at a very early age to pay attention to what people do over what people say. "Do as I say, not as I do" is always going to be ineffective.
voidhorse 9y ago
I'd be skeptical that it can teach you a moral reaction in the sense that after taking this course you'll leap at any injustice, but what it can do, and what is important, is furnish you with an ethical vocabulary and number of frameworks of thought to consider when a potential ethics issue crops up and stir that discussion/consider the situation from multiple angles--yes it won't force you to do that, but it will give you the tools you need to do so should you encounter that situation rather than leaving you a sitting duck while your superiors or whomever decide it's okay for you not to fix that bug in your self driving car code that you're aware could prevent the car from ever ceasing to accelerate (or some equivalently ridiculous and dangerous issue).
barry-cotter 9y ago
There's no evidence that teaching ethics makes one more ethical. Professional ethicists are no more moral than other philosophy professors or other professors. http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/EthSelfRep.htm http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/EthSelfRep.h... The Self-Reported Moral Behavior of Ethics Professors (in draft) Eric Schwitzgebel and Joshua Rust Abstract: 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.

WillPostForFood 9y ago

You can have effective or ineffective teaching of ethics, but you can teach it. We aren't born ethical creatures, it is a learned behavior.

jjoonathan 9y ago
Kids learn at a very early age to pay attention to what people do over what people say. "Do as I say, not as I do" is always going to be ineffective.

voidhorse 9y ago

I'd be skeptical that it can teach you a moral reaction in the sense that after taking this course you'll leap at any injustice, but what it can do, and what is important, is furnish you with an ethical vocabulary and number of frameworks of thought to consider when a potential ethics issue crops up and stir that discussion/consider the situation from multiple angles--yes it won't force you to do that, but it will give you the tools you need to do so should you encounter that situation rather than leaving you a sitting duck while your superiors or whomever decide it's okay for you not to fix that bug in your self driving car code that you're aware could prevent the car from ever ceasing to accelerate (or some equivalently ridiculous and dangerous issue).

barry-cotter 9y ago

There's no evidence that teaching ethics makes one more ethical. Professional ethicists are no more moral than other philosophy professors or other professors. http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/EthSelfRep.htm http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/EthSelfRep.h... The Self-Reported Moral Behavior of Ethics Professors (in draft) Eric Schwitzgebel and Joshua Rust Abstract: 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.