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Researchers: Ethicists (philosophers of ethics) devote their careers to reflecting on morality and presumably care deeply about it. Moral reflection tends to promote moral behavior, and ethicists tend to be both more prone to and more skilled at moral reflection than non-ethicists. Given that the philosophical ethical theories of ethicists broadly agree with widely accepted moral standards, we expect that ethicists would tend to be better behaved than non-ethicists with regard to widely accepted moral standards.
To test this expectation we surveyed some of the attendees of a philosophical conference to assess whether people who have contact with ethicists believe that ethicists are, indeed, particularly well-behaved with regard to widely accepted moral standards. Respondents to the survey belonged to exactly one of two categories: ethicists and other philosophers (non-ethicists). Each was asked to evaluate the moral behavior of ethicists as compared to that of other philosophers and to that of non-academics. Each respondent provided an answer to each question in the survey.
Of the following percentages, which one is closest to the percent of the ethicist respondents who rated the moral behavior of ethicists as better than the moral behavior of other philosophers?
35%
40%
45%
50%
55%
| Information from Dataset | Analysis |
|---|---|
| ""Ethicists (philosophers of ethics) devote their careers to reflecting on morality and presumably care deeply about it."" |
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| ""Moral reflection tends to promote moral behavior, and ethicists tend to be both more prone to and more skilled at moral reflection than non-ethicists."" |
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| ""Given that the philosophical ethical theories of ethicists broadly agree with widely accepted moral standards, we expect that ethicists would tend to be better behaved than non-ethicists"" |
|
| ""surveyed some of the attendees of a philosophical conference to assess whether people who have contact with ethicists believe that ethicists are, indeed, particularly well-behaved"" |
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| ""Respondents to the survey belonged to exactly one of two categories: ethicists and other philosophers (non-ethicists)"" |
|
| Information from Dataset | Analysis |
|---|---|
| ""respondents used a 7-point scale where...1 means ethicists' moral behavior is substantially better, 4 means ethicists' moral behavior is about the same, and 7 means ethicists' moral behavior is substantially worse"" |
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| ""The values indicate...the number of responses for each of the ranges of ratings"" |
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| Ethicists rating themselves vs other philosophers: 12 Better, 18 Same, 4 Worse |
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| Other philosophers rating ethicists vs other philosophers: 15 Better, 18 Same, 13 Worse |
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| Ethicists rating themselves vs non-academics: 19 Better, 11 Same, 4 Worse |
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| Other philosophers rating ethicists vs non-academics: 19 Better, 16 Same, 11 Worse |
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""35%""
""40%""
""45%""
""50%""
""55%""
35%
40%
45%
50%
55%