Q&A: A Question About Ethics
A Question About Ethics
Question
To be a professor/expert in ethics, does one need to be a moral person? I’m not asking whether he ought to be moral (everyone ought to be moral), but whether an immoral person can be an expert in ethics. Is ethics simply facts about the world, in which case anyone can arrive at those facts (maybe even a computer), as in physics, for example?
Thank you
Answer
I don’t think there is such a thing as an expert in ethics. There can be an expert in ethical positions—someone who knows what different thinkers held and why. There are people who are more skilled in ethical thinking, meaning that their arguments are more likely to persuade the public. It is possible that an ethical person has a more reliable intuition about what is right and what is not. I’m not sure about that.