Ethicists are no more ethical than other philosophers. There’s no reason to believe an ethics course has any effect on behaviour rather than fluency in discussing the topic.
Joshua Rust, Eric Schwitzgebel. Ethicists’ and Nonethicists’ Responsiveness to Student E-mails: Relationships Among Expressed Normative Attitude, Self-Described Behavior, and Empirically Observed Behavior. Metaphilosophy, 2013; 44 (3): 350 DOI:
• U.S.-based ethicist professors are more likely than other philosophy professors (60% vs. 45%) to say it’s morally wrong to eat the meat of mammals, yet the ethicists are no less likely than the others to eat mammal meat.
• Ethics professors are also no more likely than other groups of professors to donate money to charity, donate blood to hospitals or the Red Cross, pay professional conference fees on the honor system, or respond regularly to student e-mails, though they tend to believe that these behaviors are more ethical.
• And in one of the most quoted findings of Schwitzgebel and Rust, ethicists seem more likely to steal library books. They found that relatively obscure ethics books of the sort likely to be borrowed mainly by professors and advanced students are about 50% more likely to be missing, presumably stolen, than non-ethics philosophy books.
Fluency when discussing ethics is extremely useful when ethics are being discussed. Ethics of future AI systems will need to be discussed among all participants in order to improve the chances do the right thing. So i think it's very important that the tech people know the terminology, whether or not it makes them return their library books.
Joshua Rust, Eric Schwitzgebel. Ethicists’ and Nonethicists’ Responsiveness to Student E-mails: Relationships Among Expressed Normative Attitude, Self-Described Behavior, and Empirically Observed Behavior. Metaphilosophy, 2013; 44 (3): 350 DOI:
https://talkingethics.com/2013/11/25/why-arent-ethicists-mor...
• U.S.-based ethicist professors are more likely than other philosophy professors (60% vs. 45%) to say it’s morally wrong to eat the meat of mammals, yet the ethicists are no less likely than the others to eat mammal meat. • Ethics professors are also no more likely than other groups of professors to donate money to charity, donate blood to hospitals or the Red Cross, pay professional conference fees on the honor system, or respond regularly to student e-mails, though they tend to believe that these behaviors are more ethical. • And in one of the most quoted findings of Schwitzgebel and Rust, ethicists seem more likely to steal library books. They found that relatively obscure ethics books of the sort likely to be borrowed mainly by professors and advanced students are about 50% more likely to be missing, presumably stolen, than non-ethics philosophy books.