Overcoming Bias

Share this post

Schwitzgebel Thoughts

www.overcomingbias.com

Discover more from Overcoming Bias

This is a blog on why we believe and do what we do, why we pretend otherwise, how we might do better, and what our descendants might do, if they don't all die.
Over 11,000 subscribers
Continue reading
Sign in

Schwitzgebel Thoughts

Robin Hanson
Apr 19, 2008
Share this post

Schwitzgebel Thoughts

www.overcomingbias.com
42
Share

Philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel asks good questions: 

I’m interested in the moral behavior of ethics professors — and why, in particular, it doesn’t appear to be any better than that of non-ethicists of similar social background. One possibility is that philosophical moral reflection is behaviorally inert. In conversation, I’ve found that philosophers are often quick to endorse that idea.   Maybe I haven’t done a very good job of articulating what I find unattractive in that view. Let me phrase my concern as a dilemma: Is philosophical reflection about ethics different in this respect from everyday moral deliberation about what to do?

If no, then the view being espoused is dark indeed: Moral deliberation, in general, is behaviorally inert. When we think morally about what we are obliged to do, the resulting judgments must either simply justify what we were going to do anyway, or if they don’t match our prior inclinations they must be cast aside as we go ahead and act contrary to them.

He’s found relevant data here:

The majority of respondents expressed the view that ethicists do not, on average, behave better than non-ethicists.  While ethicists tended to avoid saying either that ethicists in general (Version I) or individual arbitrarily selected ethicists (Version II) behave worse than non-ethicists, non-ethicists expressed that pessimistic view about as often as they expressed the view that ethicists behave better.

and here:

Study 1 found that contemporary (post-1959) ethics books were actually 25% more likely to be missing than non-ethics books.  When the list was reduced to the relatively obscure books most likely to be borrowed exclusively by professional ethicists, ethics books were almost 50% more likely to be missing.  Study 2 found that classic (pre-1900) ethics books were more than twice as likely to be missing as other classic philosophy books.

Other thoughtful observations here: 

In the 1940’s and 1950’s, many people in the United States appear to have thought they dreamed in black and white. For example, Middleton (1942) found 70.7% of college sophomores reported "rarely" or "never" seeing colors in their dreams. The present student replicated Middleton’s questionnaire and found that students in 2001 reported a significantly greater rate of colored dreaming than the earlier sample, with only 17.7% saying that they "rarely" or "never" see colors in their dreams. Assuming that dreams themselves have not changed over this time period, it appears that one or the other (or both) groups of students must be profoundly mistaken about a basic feature of their dream experiences.

Share this post

Schwitzgebel Thoughts

www.overcomingbias.com
42
Share
42 Comments
Share this discussion

Schwitzgebel Thoughts

www.overcomingbias.com
Jeff Cliff
May 15

This is really just a step beyond http://www.wendycarlos.com/... - colour is so much of a fiction generated by our heads anyway, why couldn't greyscale be seen as colour?

Expand full comment
Reply
Share
Overcoming Bias Commenter
May 15

We are not grateful for the Principia Mathematica, we are grateful for the ideas about calculus contained therein.

What ideas are contained within 'Reason and Persons' that I should care about and that cannot be found elsewhere?

Expand full comment
Reply
Share
40 more comments...
Top
New
Community

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2023 Robin Hanson
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing