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> If philosophical moral reflection tends to promote moral behavior, one might think that professional ethicists would behave morally better than do socially co
by elliekelly 5y ago
> If philosophical moral reflection tends to promote moral behavior, one might think that professional ethicists would behave morally better than do socially comparable non-ethicists. We examined three types of courteous and discourteous behavior at American Philosophical Association conferences: talking audibly while the speaker is talking (versus remaining silent), allowing the door to slam shut while entering or exiting mid-session (versus attempting to close the door quietly), and leaving behind clutter at the end of a session (versus leaving one's seat tidy).
It seems like there’s a pretty big logical leap conflating “moral behavior” with “courteous behavior”. All of the behaviors measured could indicate someone is absent-minded, lacks social awareness, or is perhaps rude. But they all could just be honest mistakes. Moral (or amoral) behavior, I would think, requires intent.
Sometimes you think a door will slowly close quietly and instead it slams. Such is life. I don’t think it’s fair or honest to use these behaviors as a proxy for morality.
- MCllorf 5y ago>"Moral (or amoral) behavior, I would think, requires intent." That itself is not something all ethicists would agree with. Finally, my bachelor's in philosophy comes in handy. I don't understand the point in even writing an article like this because it's impossible to begin without staking out your moral positions, and at that point 99% of the work is just writing a philosophy paper. I don't think you can even say that most philosophers would agree that moral reflection promotes moral behavior, because you'd have to get them all to agree on what moral behavior is - or in other words, you'd have to solve the problem the field has been trying to solve for the entirety of its existence.
- toast0 5y ago> I don't think you can even say that most philosophers would agree that moral reflection promotes moral behavior, because you'd have to get them all to agree on what moral behavior is - or in other words, you'd have to solve the problem the field has been trying to solve for the entirety of its existence. I don't have the philosophy creds, but I don't think you really need to agree on what's moral behavior to think that thinking about it may promote behavior inline with the moral framework of the contemplator, whatever that happens to be. Or if the behavior didn't change, perhaps the contemplator wasn't really reflecting on morals after all.
- MCllorf 5y agoIt does make sense to use "whatever the contemplator thinks to be moral" as a stand-in for moral behavior. My only quip would be that whatever the contemplator thinks to be moral and what actually is moral are not necessarily the same thing though. I suppose in that case the study would just be asking if ethicists follow their own rules - I've been out of college for a bit but I don't think common courtesy is a hot topic in ethics at the moment.
- toast0 5y agoThat's certainly an aspect that would make it hard to interpret the behavior; if few ethicists feel it's immoral to let doors close loudly, then all of their reflection wouldn't change their behavior; and it would be hard to determine people's beliefs.
- pessimizer 5y agoThat's how Schwitzgebel would see it: http://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/ActBel.htm http://faculty.ucr.edu/~eschwitz/SchwitzAbs/ActBel.htm Acting Contrary to Our Professed Beliefs, or The Gulf Between Occurrent Judgment and Dispositional Belief
- sportslife 5y agoAn old moral philosophy joke, I heard, is: utilitarianism is probably true, but it's probably best that nobody actually believes it.