Results give some support to the notion that bioethicists are more like PR professionals, geared to reproducing common sentiments rather than a group that is OK with sometimes taking difficult stances. Questions 6 & 7 especially seem like vague left-wing truisms.
On the other hand, there does seem to be a substantial (minority?) which isn’t this way, so perhaps it’s not fair to condemn all bioethicists, as some tend to. Or maybe much of actual research is OK and there’s too much worrying about certain in-group signals. Maybe critics are doing a motte-and-bailey:
...it is worth some eyebrow-raising if it turns out that the ingroup defense is something along the lines of “well, by bioethicists, we mean research ethicists, and by research ethicists we mean research bureaucrats, and by research bureaucrats, we mean research bureaucracy.” It feels like blaming congressional gridlock on political philosophers at a certain point.
This seems plausible. But I still can’t get over 40% thinking being blind would be not disadvantaging if society was “justly designed”. Even if individual opinions aren’t everything, surely it matters that the supposed experts, who are plausibly themselves in positions of influence, exhibit such poor reasoning?
I think a complication is that some people answering might have a theory of justice wherein a fully just world by definition corrects/compensates any disadvantages that come with being blind. I think this view still raises concerns for people who either think that the loss of a major personal capability isn’t something that is fungible with any social compensation for reasons basic to their theory of autonomy/flourishing, or people who think that justice will not demand fully compensating disadvantages like this at all. Still, I doubt 40% of respondents think the less plausible interpretation of this answer is true.
I suppose I can see that. The word “disadvantaging” though seems to have a fairly uncontroversial definition to me. If we take “disadvantaging” to mean “insufficiently compensated for”, then what word means “generally harmful to the achievement of personal aims, relative to baseline ambitions”?
I took the answer more as (at best) a way of saying “I support disability rights”. Which I might actually be kinda OK with in a different context. Maybe while giving a public speech to a particular crowd. But this is an anonymous academic survey. At a certain point you have to put your foot down and say “this is what words mean”.
I’m not sure I even share your definition here, I think “disadvantaged” doesn’t refer to a lack of compensation or anything else so specific, just overall whether you are below the relevant threshold of advantages. This seems very straightforward and I don’t think I need a definition of disadvantage that specifically references compensation anywhere, just one that doesn’t discount a level of advantage if it turns out compensation was involved in getting it. I also kind of disagree that you can just rely on “this is what words mean” anyway. I have taken very few surveys where I could just literally answer all the questions. Because of phrasing limitations, many questions are only really designed to allow uncomplicated yes/no or multiple choice answers to a few possible positions. Typically I have to imagine a slightly different version of survey questions in order to answer them at all.
Results give some support to the notion that bioethicists are more like PR professionals, geared to reproducing common sentiments rather than a group that is OK with sometimes taking difficult stances. Questions 6 & 7 especially seem like vague left-wing truisms.
On the other hand, there does seem to be a substantial (minority?) which isn’t this way, so perhaps it’s not fair to condemn all bioethicists, as some tend to. Or maybe much of actual research is OK and there’s too much worrying about certain in-group signals. Maybe critics are doing a motte-and-bailey:
This seems plausible. But I still can’t get over 40% thinking being blind would be not disadvantaging if society was “justly designed”. Even if individual opinions aren’t everything, surely it matters that the supposed experts, who are plausibly themselves in positions of influence, exhibit such poor reasoning?
I think a complication is that some people answering might have a theory of justice wherein a fully just world by definition corrects/compensates any disadvantages that come with being blind. I think this view still raises concerns for people who either think that the loss of a major personal capability isn’t something that is fungible with any social compensation for reasons basic to their theory of autonomy/flourishing, or people who think that justice will not demand fully compensating disadvantages like this at all. Still, I doubt 40% of respondents think the less plausible interpretation of this answer is true.
I suppose I can see that. The word “disadvantaging” though seems to have a fairly uncontroversial definition to me. If we take “disadvantaging” to mean “insufficiently compensated for”, then what word means “generally harmful to the achievement of personal aims, relative to baseline ambitions”?
I took the answer more as (at best) a way of saying “I support disability rights”. Which I might actually be kinda OK with in a different context. Maybe while giving a public speech to a particular crowd. But this is an anonymous academic survey. At a certain point you have to put your foot down and say “this is what words mean”.
I’m not sure I even share your definition here, I think “disadvantaged” doesn’t refer to a lack of compensation or anything else so specific, just overall whether you are below the relevant threshold of advantages. This seems very straightforward and I don’t think I need a definition of disadvantage that specifically references compensation anywhere, just one that doesn’t discount a level of advantage if it turns out compensation was involved in getting it. I also kind of disagree that you can just rely on “this is what words mean” anyway. I have taken very few surveys where I could just literally answer all the questions. Because of phrasing limitations, many questions are only really designed to allow uncomplicated yes/no or multiple choice answers to a few possible positions. Typically I have to imagine a slightly different version of survey questions in order to answer them at all.