Is there any evidence that people who study ethics actually behave more ethically then those who do not? Is so then does that mean that virtue can be taught or only that those who are virtuous tend to study ethics? Has anyone seen papers on either of these questions? Maybe a paper in a psychology journal or something?
because ethics would be in the for front of someone's mind when they are studying ethics it would only make sense that people who study ethics are more ethical than your average person. i dont think you really need any proof of this. it is an honest question but i believe that you already know the answer and truthfully, knowing the answer to that question really doesnt do anybody any good anyways. i am an ethical person and that is because i made a point to become the best person that i can be a long time ago. i did not need to go to school to study ethics because life experience should be all that is needed for someone to develop a good sense of what is ethical. not to say that one can not learn ethics in a class as i am sure you can. just saying that school is not the only way to go. someone could be a very ethical person having never set foot in an ethics class.
I may not need a proof but I would like some objective data which confirms my assumptions of the subject.
It goes back to nature and nurture. There is always those two inputs which greatly effects the outcome of ethics. No I dont think that is would be true they are more ethical. Different cultures have different means, and this along with culture would impact ethics directly- different things are okay in some cultures and not others.
well its hard to do a scientific study and gather data on something as obscure as ethics. Those who study ethics may live more in accordance with their prescribed moral code, but in order to gather good evidence you would need an agreed upon all around definition of good ethics, which as the poster above me pointed out, is often disputed.
But you can study say criminology - does that mean you have to be more of a criminal than those you are working with? It can swing both ways.
If we use scientific methodology in studying ethics, then we should come to conclusions as to the validity of certain propositions. If a person who does this then attempts to apply what he has learned, then they would in that sense become more ethical.
are there enough people who "study ethics" to form a statisticly signifigant sample? people who study how to avoid causing suffering are in all probability generally premotivated to do so. there IS a UNIVERSAL SELF intrest in doing so. awaireness of its existence appears somewhat less then universal though. a more interesting question is how accurate is that appearance. i both hope and expect that it isn't very, but of course must mistrust my wishful thinking. mistrusting doesn't though, require me to throw all hope of it out with the bath water either. =^^= .../\...
Generally no; the study of ethics (as in a classroom or at home) is only a study of words. Studying about aircraft does not make a person a pilot, and studying about ethics does not make a person ethical. In my personal experience of observing many individuals who have given effort to study ethics, almost none of the individuals were more ‘ethical’ than anyone else, and in fact, the individuals tended to be less ‘ethical’ than the general public. 3xi made a good comment: “i made a point to become the best person that i can be a long time ago.” The self-will to strive for self-correctness is very close to the realization of what ‘ethics’ imply. 3xi would be a far better person to ask about ethics than a typical graduate that studied ethics. There are numerous difficulties in the topic of ethics. The primary difficulty is that there does not exist a clarified definition among the general public of what “ethics” means. Without a definition of what ‘ethics’ mean, there can be no rational thought of what is ethical and what is not ethical. Whatshappenin23 said it well: “its hard to do a scientific study and gather data on something as obscure as ethics. …in order to gather good evidence you would need an agreed upon all around definition of good ethics, which as the poster above me pointed out, is often disputed.” It is now possible to state in specific sequencings of physics and psychology, backed by a scientific method of verification, the origins of ethics. The knowledge still has not made it into the general public, and quite honestly, I personally doubt that it ever will. Humans have a strong tendency to hate and reject anything that might oppose their system of beliefs, and neither the theist nor the atheist will accept universal ethics. Virtue cannot be taught. Virtue is like ethics, there is no clarified definition within the general public. A thing cannot be taught if it is unknown what the thing is. But too, virtue is not a singularity, it is the combinative result of several attributes that combine to create the thing called “virtue.” To create virtue, first there must exist ethics, and before ethics there must be a definition of what an ethic is. Theism and atheism both discredit themselves when they claim to be things that neither know the definition of. Yes there is a book available about the topic, but since I am associated with the publishing, it would be improper for me to name the title. If a person is sincerely interested in the topics, the person can easily find the book.
