Eric Schwitzgebel

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Eric Schwitzgebel is an American professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. His main interests include connections between empirical psychology and philosophy of mind and the nature of belief. [1] [2] He received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of Elisabeth A. Lloyd, Alison Gopnik, and John Searle.

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Schwitzgebel has studied the behavior of philosophers, particularly ethicists, using empirical methods. The articles he has published investigate whether ethicists behave more ethically than other populations. In a 2009 study, Schwitzgebel investigated the rate at which ethics books were missing from academic libraries compared to similar philosophy books. The study found that ethics books were in fact missing at higher rates than comparable texts in other disciplines. [3] Subsequent research has measured the behavior of ethicists at conferences, the perceptions of other philosophers about ethicists, and the self-reported behavior of ethicists. [4] [5] [6] Schwitzgebel's research did not find that the ethical behavior of ethicists differed from the behavior of professors in other disciplines. In addition, his research found that the moral beliefs of professional philosophers were just as susceptible to being influenced by irrelevant factors as those of non-philosophers. [7] Schwitzgebel has concluded that, "Professional ethicists appear to behave no differently than do non-ethicists of similar social background." [8]

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Related Research Articles

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References

  1. "Eric Schwitzgebel". Closer to Truth . Retrieved June 23, 2017.
  2. "CPBD 082: Eric Schwitzgebel – The Unreliability of Naive Introspection". commonsenseatheism. Retrieved June 23, 2017.
  3. Schwitzgebel, Eric (December 1, 2009). "Do ethicists steal more books?". Philosophical Psychology. 22 (6): 711–725. doi:10.1080/09515080903409952. ISSN   0951-5089. S2CID   18159436.
  4. Schwitzgebel, Eric; Rust, Joshua; Huang, Linus Ta-Lun; Moore, Alan T.; Coates, Justin (June 1, 2012). "Ethicists' courtesy at philosophy conferences". Philosophical Psychology. 25 (3): 331–340. doi:10.1080/09515089.2011.580524. ISSN   0951-5089. S2CID   58906717.
  5. Schwitzgebel, Eric (2009). "The Moral Behaviour of Ethicists: Peer Opinion". MIND. 118 (472): 1043–1059. doi:10.1093/mind/fzp108 via Oxford Academic.
  6. Sytsma, Justin; Buckwalter, Wesley, eds. (2016). A Companion to Experimental Philosophy. doi:10.1002/9781118661666. ISBN   9781118661666.
  7. Schwitzgebel, Eric; Cushman, Fiery (2012). "Expertise in Moral Reasoning? Order Effects on Moral Judgment in Professional Philosophers and Non-Philosophers". Mind & Language. 27 (2): 135–153. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0017.2012.01438.x . ISSN   1468-0017.
  8. Schwitzgebel, Eric (2014), Luetge, Christoph; Rusch, Hannes; Uhl, Matthias (eds.), "The Moral Behavior of Ethicists and the Role of the Philosopher", Experimental Ethics: Toward an Empirical Moral Philosophy, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 59–64, doi:10.1057/9781137409805_5, ISBN   978-1-137-40980-5 , retrieved June 26, 2021