We confess that we find our main result surprising: that is, our across-the-board failure to find evidence for philosophical expertise and reflection in moderating biased moral judgment. We would have thought—we are still inclined to think—that at a high-enough level of expertise people won’t be much swayed by order and framing, at least when they report having stable opinions and are encouraged to answer reflectively. We wouldn’t expect, for example, that Judith Jarvis Thomson or John Martin Fischer would rate Push and Switch equivalently if the scenarios are presented in one order and inequivalently if they are presented in another order. However, if there is a level of philosophical expertise that reduces the influence of factors such as order and frame upon one’s moral judgments, we have yet to find empirical evidence of it.
(Eric Schwitzgebel and Fiery Cushman, "Philosophers' Biased Judgments Persist Despite Training, Expertise and Reflection," Cognition 141 [August 2015]: 127-37, at 136 [parenthetical references omitted])
Note from KBJ: Only a philosopher could think that philosophers are less biased than nonphilosophers.
