It disturbs me when individuals who are not qualified to write of moral topics do so in a public forum. This is especially troublesome to me when, say, an individual with excellent press credentials - but no background in ethics - writes an article about morality. People will listen to this individual simply because of his or her credentials. Ethics is an extremely complicated field. Ethicists spend years upon years studying the plethora of theories propounded by philosophers across time and space. It is to these individuals that we ought to turn when questions of morality arise - not individuals with simply great press credentials.
The reason I say this is because I recently read this article in which a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist wrote a column about the morality of the use of drones in war. This is a question of just war, of ethics. I looked at this author's biography on the Washington Post website and Googled him, but found no credentials in ethics specifically. This author undoubtedly has had an impressive 25-year career at the Washington Post, but does that make him a qualified ethicist? I think not.
In fact, I found the article to have a very weak argument and even found an informal logical fallacy in it (see if you can find it, too). And let's be honest, if this fallacy were pointed out to him without explanation, would this columnist even know what it meant? I venture to say that an ethicist certainly would, but I'm not so sure that this author would. And that troubles me.
Hopefully I'm incorrect. Hopefully this author has studied philosophy for years and earned a doctorate with a concentration in ethics. That would be great. If that is the case, then I stand corrected. I just can't find that information on him and it troubles me that an individual writes of morality without any real knowledge of ethics. In fact, it seems to me that writing about ethics while standing upon press credentials unrelated to ethics is a morally blameworthy act itself. Any thoughts?
Take care,
--Nan
To be honest, I find this more than a little pretentious. I respect your work and your credentials, but it seems more than a little arrogant to suggest that only philosophers or people who have spent "years upon years studying the plethora of theories propounded by philosophers across time and space" are "qualified" to write on ethical issues.
ReplyDeleteFrom where I'm sitting, all you need is a good command of the English language, some clear reasoning behind your opinion, and a functioning conscience. You may not always be "right," or whatever, but you do have the right to express your opinion. When it comes to studying ethics, there really isn't a "correct answer." As you and I both know - coming from the same school, same professors, etc., etc. - there isn't an absolute, sovereign morality that governs over us all (unless one accepts a religious authority, which most philosophers probably don't).
I understand how you feel. It probably seems to you that some "unprofessional" is treading in your "professional" domain. From your perspective, this, I imagine, is akin to a veterinarian trying to come into the surgical wing of a hospital and tell a neurosurgeon how to perform an EC-IC surgery. I'm just not sure that kind of territoriality applies to fields like ethics.
Honestly, though, this is a lot of the problem I've had with philosophy as a "profession," all along. Philosophers, and by this I mean "professors of philosophy," have this absurd notion that they are the Gatekeepers of Knowledge and Wisdom, that they alone are "qualified" to determine who knows what about what. That's arrogant, and, I believe, it's wrong.
If someone in the press has a functioning conscience - a dubious proposition, I grant you - I am more than happy to listen to their views and opinions, even if on a topic like ethics. I may disagree with them or find flaws in their reasoning, but I refuse to dismiss them out of hand simply because they're not a professional "Ethicist." That, to me, seems like the crudest kind of ab hominem attack, and I was taught (as you were) to avoid such fallacies.