Popularizing Moral Philosophy by Acting as a Moral Expert

Frauke Albersmeier

doi:10.1515/krt-2021-0037

Abstract

Abstract This paper is concerned with the ethics of popularizing moral philosophy. In particular, it addresses the question of whether ethicists engaged in public debates should restrict themselves to acting as impartial informants or moderators rather than advocates of their own moral opinions. I dismiss the idea that being an impartial servant to moral debates is the default or even the only defensible way to publicly exercise ethical expertise and thus, to popularize moral philosophy. Using a case example from the public debate about the human use of nonhuman animals, I highlight the benefits and risks of endorsing an advocate’s and a teacher’s or moderator’s role, respectively. I argue for a general requirement of judgment transparency which entails that the publicly engaged philosopher ought to be clear and consistent about the type of role she takes on, her publicly advanced opinions generally ought to be her professional ones and that she ought to flag her private opinions. I finally show that, despite general concerns about conflicts of interest, exercising ethical expertise and engaging in advocacy, i.e., acting as if one were a moral expert, are not incompatible modes of public engagement for the moral philosopher.

Highlights

This paper is concerned with the ethics of popularizing philosophy, and especially, the ethics of popularizing moral philosophy
The relationship between academic philosophy and the public has recently become the topic of, at times passionate, interjections calling for more public engagement by philosophers, in the face of the alleged dawn of “post-truth politics,” and given the pressure on academic philosophy to demonstrate its relevance in order to secure funding and continued institutional existence
For example, Michael Sandel’s comment on inequality and nationalism at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos (World Economic Forum 2017), Jeff McMahan and Peter Singer’s opinion piece in the New York Times on the first sentencing of Anna Stubblefield, a philosophy professor charged with sexual assault of a man with mental disabilities (McMahan and Singer 2017), Martha Nussbaum discussing the role of fear and anger in political action in an interview with TIME (Rothman 2018), or Slavoj Žižek frequently publishing on multiple issues in various mass media outlets

Summary

Introduction

This paper is concerned with the ethics of popularizing philosophy, and especially, the ethics of popularizing moral philosophy The relevant evaluation is more comprehensive and normative than the identification of a situation as an “interview setting,” and it is focused on matters concerning the epistemic setup and the role of the public performance of the moral philosopher in creating an overall fair and fact-based discourse At this point, it shall only be indicated that a situation is to be considered a standard one in this sense if concerns with regard to the audience’s susceptibility to a biased performance are not aggravated beyond a certain threshold compared to everyday discourse among adult citizens. Gesang agrees with Singer’s conclusion, but makes an explicit appeal to a coherentist approach to justification to argue for the likely moral expertise of moral philosophers To him, it is because of their knowledge of ethical theories that ethicists may reach “complete reflective equilibrium” so that their judgments are “better founded and will be right with high probability.” (Gesang 2010, p.158) Gesang’s view renders philosophers “semi-experts,” because of the other ingredients to the reflective equilibrium: intuitions. What we are concerned with here are the following questions: Is there a comparably greater risk of harm in acting as a moral expert when expertise in ethics is what is being sought, vis-à-vis taking a supposedly more neutral kind of role (given that we do not rely on the moral expertise hypothesis to assess the ethicists’ public performance)? How does acting as a moral expert relate to the task of “popularizing philosophy”?

Exercising Moral Expertise Ought to be Popularization

The Ethicist’s Expert Role

Original: “DIE ZEIT

The Requirement of Judgment Transparency

In Defense of Partisan Experts

Conclusion