Following on from the less than exemplarly behaviour of Bishop Donal Murray, a formare professor of moral philosophy, it’s a good time to read the the instant classic study by Eric Schwitzgebel that found that professional ethicists are none too ethical.
Inferred from the fact that books on the Ethics are 50% more likely to get stolen from university libraries than equivalently popular academic philosophy wworks
DO Ethicists steal more books?
Eric SchwitzgebelPhilosophical Psychology, 22 (2009), 711-725
Abstract:If explicit cognition about morality promotes moral behavior then one might expect ethics professors to behave particularly well. However, professional ethicists behavior has never been empirically studied. The present research examined the rates at which ethics books are missing from leading academic libraries, compared to other philosophy books similar in age and popularity. Study 1 found that relatively obscure, contemporary ethics books of the sort likely to be borrowed mainly by professors and advanced students of philosophy were actually about 50% more likely to be missing than non-ethics books. Study 2 found that classic (pre-1900) ethics books were about twice as likely to be missing.
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