Are Ethicists Better People?
Why study ethics? No, seriously. Why? This isn’t a rhetorical question. Maybe you’ve read articles titled something like “Why study nutrition?” Those articles usually give good reasons. “Understanding nutrition will help you eat better.” Articles like those exist for philosophy too. They extol philosophy’s utility. They’ll claim “It helps you challenge your point of view” or “Philosophy can help you lead a better life!” Perhaps the most attractive benefit advertised is that ethics can help you be a better person. But does it do those things? Does it really? The research we have suggests that the answer is no.
Research about the lives of medical professionals shows that they make healthier choices. For example, the research on medical professionals’ smoking habits finds that doctors smoke less than the general population. It feels like common sense. If we know better, we do better - usually. Therefore, doctors, who know more about health, live healthier. Can the same be said for ethicists?
Ethicists study right and wrong, good and bad, justice, honesty, and other values, rules, and norms. If ethicists study what it means to be a ‘good person’. The question follows, by their standards, are they good people?
Do Ethicists Behave More Ethically?
Professor Eric Schwitzgebel of the University of California Riverside wanted to begin to answer these questions. For over a decade now, Schwitzgebel has been studying philosophers to see how they behave. In 2009 Schwitzgebel published his first and likely most famous article on the behavior of ethicists. If the article’s title, Do Ethicists Steal More Books? sounds like the opening line to a joke, it might as well be, because the answer Schwitzgebel found was “Yes.” The study compared the rate at which ethics books and other philosophy books of similar age and popularity were returned at academic libraries. Apparently, ethicists and students of ethics aren’t returning the books they borrow as much as others.
Well, that’s just one study. There might be other reasons ethics books are not being returned. Maybe they are being donated to needy students who can’t access or afford Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, but have always dreamt of having a copy of their own. Luckily, Schwitzgebel didn’t stop with his one pioneering study. He has conducted observational studies of how ethicists behave at conferences, surveys to collect data on how other philosophers perceive ethicists, and even surveys of ethicists themselves about how they live.
The findings paint a bleak picture. At conferences, ethicists were just as likely to slam doors, talk during someone else’s presentation, or leave behind trash. Likewise, other philosophers on average didn’t think that the ethicists around them behaved ‘better’. Even ethicists themselves reported that they don’t donate blood, give to charity, or even respond to student emails at rates higher than others of a similar social background.
Are Ethicists Hypocrites?
It’s disappointing to think that those who dedicate their lives to studying right and wrong don’t behave ‘better’. What’s the point of studying ethics then? Is there anything different about ethicists? Schwitzgebel found that there was at least one feature distinct to them: they were the most expressive and stringent about what they believed to be right and wrong - even if they didn’t act accordingly. For example, ethicists tended to strongly agree that regularly eating meat was wrong. Did they do it less than their peers on average? No. So the findings aren’t confounded by disagreement between ethicists.
If someone confidently told you “Eating meat is bad!” but they said so while eating a cheeseburger, you’d struggle not to judge them. The label ‘hypocrite’ probably comes to mind. As a demographic, ethicists seem to fit the bill. The conclusion to one of Schwitzgebel’s studies concludes: “It remains to be shown that even a lifetime’s worth of philosophical moral reflection has any influence upon one’s real world moral behavior.”
Should Philosophy be a Way of Life?
If you think studying right and wrong lead to better behavior, these findings may disappoint. If you assume that hypocrisy is the norm, maybe you aren’t surprised. If ancient philosophers were alive today, however, they’d likely be disappointed. The ancients commonly believed that one’s philosophy and lifestyle should match. Cynics like Diogenes, and Stoics like Epictetus, who advocated simpler lives, indeed lived more simply. Diogenes famously lived in a barrel. Socrates championed his philosophical lifestyle and died for it. Right or wrong, in each case, belief and action were clearly connected. So what happened?
Philosophy for the ancients was also a way of life. To be a philosopher meant living differently. Today though, philosophy is a discipline among disciplines. It’s a profession. The social and economic category of ‘philosopher’ today little resembles the lives led by ancients.
As Schwitzgebel writes, helping us to imagine an ethicist’s possible response: “How can you call me a hypocrite? I only study right and wrong, but I never claimed to live it. If I have to change my life, you’d have to pay me more!” For today’s philosophers, philosophy doesn’t have to be a way of life, it’s a career. Some think philosophers simply study ethical norms, that’s it. In this view, we can imagine ethicists like sports commentators, judging athletic excellence without needing to possess it.
Are We Satisfied?
Is this response satisfactory? The conviction that if someone knows better they would or should do better is common. A sports commentator can have beliefs about what makes a goalkeeper excellent, but the commentator isn’t a goalkeeper, so we can’t expect them to be able to block Messi. Philosophers and ethicists however, often are their own subjects of study, praise, and blame. Ethicists frequently discuss what makes a good person and ethicists are people. So it might feel as though the sports commentator analogy falls short.
Maybe we don’t expect philosophers who specialize in film theory to donate more to charity, metaphysicians to be better guests, or specialists in Medieval philosophy to be vegetarians.
But ethicists? If their studies and their lives overlap, should we expect coherence between their beliefs and behaviors?
These questions force us to ask myriad others. What power do beliefs have? What defines hypocrisy? Can someone truly know something which they contradict with their actions? In addition, we are pressed to ask questions about philosophers and philosophy itself. Is philosophy a way of life, should it be? How should ethicists behave? The avalanche of questions is daunting. How do we answer them? I don’t know, but now may be a good time to ask an ethicist.