This makes me wonder, what makes someone an âexpertâ in ethics whose ethical views should be taken seriously? Is it knowing the nuances of an ethical system?
FWIW, I didnât major in ethics but I did take a few ethics classes, and I found that every professor I saw had basic, obvious misunderstandings of utilitarianism.
The most common type is various instances of âutilitarianism endorses doing this thing that clearly decreases utility, therefore utilitarianism is wrong.â Hard to remember specifics because this was 6 to 10 years ago. I just remember being struck by how these supposed experts had such basic misunderstandings.
Taking what you said at face value, whatâs going on here, institutionally? Philosophy is a nontrivially competitive field, and Stanford professorships arenât easy to get.
They donât compete for jobs in âPhilosophy,â they compete for jobs in a specific department which specializes in, say, deconstructionist readings of Nietzscheâs later work. (OK, Iâm exaggerating slightly. But the point standsâthey donât need to know anything about Philosophy as a whole to do their research and get papers published, or even to teach most of their classes.)
This is odd. I audited/âfreeloaded at a perfectly mediocre university math department and they seemed careful to assign the prof whoâs dissertation was in functional analysis to teach real analysis, and the prof whoâs dissertation was in algebraic geometry to teach group theory. I guess I only observed in the 3rd/â4th year courses case. For 1st/â2nd year courses, intuitively youâd want the analysts teaching calculus and the logicians teaching discrete, perhaps something like this, but I donât expect a disaster if they crossed the streams, in the way that I sort of think learning the basic deontology vs. utilitarianism distinction from a nietzsche expert, a deleuze or derrida expert, etc. is a disaster.
(Thankful I learned both calculus and discrete from a professor who dropped out of a high-energy particle physics PhD to do a topoi theory PhD in the math departmentâmaybe the optimal teachers fit a description like that, interdisciplinarity and so on)
I actually agree with this part of the Galef/âYglesias discussion, in that I think for major public health decisions they should generally be more a matter of public endorsement than ethical âexpertiseâ. As for what expertise might look like, I guess it would be understanding different well-known distinctions (hedonism versus desire satisfaction, act/âomission versus intention) and well known dilemmas (totalist population axiology sounds no good, but neither does anything else) which can make a difference to how you think about the issues.
This makes me wonder, what makes someone an âexpertâ in ethics whose ethical views should be taken seriously? Is it knowing the nuances of an ethical system?
FWIW, I didnât major in ethics but I did take a few ethics classes, and I found that every professor I saw had basic, obvious misunderstandings of utilitarianism.
Could you give some examples?
The most common type is various instances of âutilitarianism endorses doing this thing that clearly decreases utility, therefore utilitarianism is wrong.â Hard to remember specifics because this was 6 to 10 years ago. I just remember being struck by how these supposed experts had such basic misunderstandings.
Taking what you said at face value, whatâs going on here, institutionally? Philosophy is a nontrivially competitive field, and Stanford professorships arenât easy to get.
They donât compete for jobs in âPhilosophy,â they compete for jobs in a specific department which specializes in, say, deconstructionist readings of Nietzscheâs later work. (OK, Iâm exaggerating slightly. But the point standsâthey donât need to know anything about Philosophy as a whole to do their research and get papers published, or even to teach most of their classes.)
This is odd. I audited/âfreeloaded at a perfectly mediocre university math department and they seemed careful to assign the prof whoâs dissertation was in functional analysis to teach real analysis, and the prof whoâs dissertation was in algebraic geometry to teach group theory. I guess I only observed in the 3rd/â4th year courses case. For 1st/â2nd year courses, intuitively youâd want the analysts teaching calculus and the logicians teaching discrete, perhaps something like this, but I donât expect a disaster if they crossed the streams, in the way that I sort of think learning the basic deontology vs. utilitarianism distinction from a nietzsche expert, a deleuze or derrida expert, etc. is a disaster.
(Thankful I learned both calculus and discrete from a professor who dropped out of a high-energy particle physics PhD to do a topoi theory PhD in the math departmentâmaybe the optimal teachers fit a description like that, interdisciplinarity and so on)
I actually agree with this part of the Galef/âYglesias discussion, in that I think for major public health decisions they should generally be more a matter of public endorsement than ethical âexpertiseâ. As for what expertise might look like, I guess it would be understanding different well-known distinctions (hedonism versus desire satisfaction, act/âomission versus intention) and well known dilemmas (totalist population axiology sounds no good, but neither does anything else) which can make a difference to how you think about the issues.