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Do Ethicists and Political Philosophers Vote More Often Than Other Professors?

If philosophical moral reflection improves moral behavior, one might expect ethics professors to behave morally better than socially similar non-ethicists. Under the assumption that forms of political engagement such as voting have moral worth, we looked at the rate at which a sample of professional...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Schwitzgebel, Eric, Rust, Joshua
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Netherlands 2009
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3339026/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22558060
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13164-009-0011-6
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author Schwitzgebel, Eric
Rust, Joshua
author_facet Schwitzgebel, Eric
Rust, Joshua
author_sort Schwitzgebel, Eric
collection PubMed
description If philosophical moral reflection improves moral behavior, one might expect ethics professors to behave morally better than socially similar non-ethicists. Under the assumption that forms of political engagement such as voting have moral worth, we looked at the rate at which a sample of professional ethicists—and political philosophers as a subgroup of ethicists—voted in eight years’ worth of elections. We compared ethicists’ and political philosophers’ voting rates with the voting rates of three other groups: philosophers not specializing in ethics, political scientists, and a comparison group of professors specializing in neither philosophy nor political science. All groups voted at about the same rate, except for the political scientists, who voted about 10–15% more often. On the face of it, this finding conflicts with the expectation that ethicists will behave more responsibly than non-ethicists. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13164-009-0011-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-33390262012-05-01 Do Ethicists and Political Philosophers Vote More Often Than Other Professors? Schwitzgebel, Eric Rust, Joshua Rev Philos Psychol Article If philosophical moral reflection improves moral behavior, one might expect ethics professors to behave morally better than socially similar non-ethicists. Under the assumption that forms of political engagement such as voting have moral worth, we looked at the rate at which a sample of professional ethicists—and political philosophers as a subgroup of ethicists—voted in eight years’ worth of elections. We compared ethicists’ and political philosophers’ voting rates with the voting rates of three other groups: philosophers not specializing in ethics, political scientists, and a comparison group of professors specializing in neither philosophy nor political science. All groups voted at about the same rate, except for the political scientists, who voted about 10–15% more often. On the face of it, this finding conflicts with the expectation that ethicists will behave more responsibly than non-ethicists. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13164-009-0011-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. Springer Netherlands 2009-12-01 2010 /pmc/articles/PMC3339026/ /pubmed/22558060 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13164-009-0011-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2009 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
spellingShingle Article
Schwitzgebel, Eric
Rust, Joshua
Do Ethicists and Political Philosophers Vote More Often Than Other Professors?
title Do Ethicists and Political Philosophers Vote More Often Than Other Professors?
title_full Do Ethicists and Political Philosophers Vote More Often Than Other Professors?
title_fullStr Do Ethicists and Political Philosophers Vote More Often Than Other Professors?
title_full_unstemmed Do Ethicists and Political Philosophers Vote More Often Than Other Professors?
title_short Do Ethicists and Political Philosophers Vote More Often Than Other Professors?
title_sort do ethicists and political philosophers vote more often than other professors?
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3339026/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22558060
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13164-009-0011-6
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