An Empirical Perspective on Moral Expertise: Evidence from a Global Study of Philosophers

Are philosophers experts in moral matters? This contested question is as old as philosophy itself and has recently attracted renewed interest. While it is widely accepted that philosophers possess superior analytic abilities regarding moral matters, scholars still debate whether they are also better judgers of moral problems. We contribute to this debate by offering an empirical perspective on philosophers’ beliefs regarding this question using a novel and global study among 4,087 philosophers from 96 countries. We found that most philosophers believe that philosophers possess an improved ability to both analyze and judge moral problems and that they commonly see these two capacities as going hand in hand. We also point at significant associations between personal and professional attributes and philosophers’ beliefs, such as gender, age, working in the field of moral philosophy, public involvement, and association with the analytic tradition. We discuss the implications of these findings for the debate about moral expertise.