Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Federmann School of Public Policy, Faculty of Social Sciences, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel.
Bioethics. 2023 Jul;37(6):551-563. doi: 10.1111/bioe.13171. Epub 2023 May 16.
In recent decades, the discipline of bioethics has grown rapidly, as has the practice of ethical consultation. Interestingly, this new recognition of the relevance of moral philosophy to our daily life has been accompanied by skepticism among philosophers regarding the existence of moral expertise or the benefits of philosophical training. In his recent article in Bioethics, William R. Smith suggested that this skepticism is rooted in philosophers' belief that moral expertise is inconsistent with liberal-democratic values, when in fact they are compatible. In this paper, we provide a unique opportunity to empirically examine Smith's observation by utilizing and extending global data on philosophers' beliefs about moral expertise, involving 4087 philosophers from 96 countries. Our findings support Smith's theoretical observation and show that societal levels of support for liberal-democratic values are associated with greater skepticism about moral expertise. We suggest that these findings might be explained by the cognitive process of motivated reasoning and an invalid inference of "is" from "ought." Consequently, the potential tension between moral expertise and liberal-democratic values is invalidly used for rejecting the existence of moral expertise, while its main and valid implication is for how moral expertise should be applied in liberal-democratic settings.
近几十年来，生物伦理学领域发展迅速，伦理咨询实践也随之发展。有趣的是，这种对道德哲学与日常生活相关性的新认识伴随着哲学家对道德专业知识的存在或哲学训练的好处的怀疑。在他最近发表在《生物伦理学》上的文章中，威廉·R·史密斯（William R. Smith）认为，这种怀疑主义源于哲学家们认为道德专业知识与自由民主价值观不一致的信念，而实际上它们是一致的。在本文中，我们通过利用和扩展涉及来自 96 个国家的 4087 名哲学家的关于道德专业知识的全球数据，为检验史密斯的观察提供了一个独特的机会。我们的研究结果支持了史密斯的理论观察，并表明社会对自由民主价值观的支持程度与对道德专业知识的怀疑程度呈正相关。我们认为，这些发现可以通过动机推理的认知过程和从“应该”到“是”的无效推断来解释。因此，道德专业知识与自由民主价值观之间的潜在紧张关系被错误地用来否定道德专业知识的存在，而其主要和有效的含义是道德专业知识应该如何在自由民主环境中应用。
