CSID fellows Kelli Barr and Wenlong Lu just published a thoughtful piece at the Social Epistemology Review & Reply Collective. They consider a recent professional meeting that they attended and the implications of having a diverse crowd of trained experts who are impacted by professional ethics while not themselves being professional ethicists.
On the surface the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics (APPE) annual meeting, held February 28 to March 3 (2013) in San Antonio, Texas, appeared similar to any other philosophy conference. Conference rituals are familiar. Professionals roam from meeting room to meeting room at a metropolitan hotel and listen as other professionals gave careful expositions of their latest research…
The conference landmarks were made navigable by the extensive map detailing participants and their institutional affiliations, presentation topics, Association news, and advertisements — the APPE program… Contrary to what one might expect, however, the list of participants includes not only philosophers and professional ethicists, but also academic scientists and engineers, industry members, medical doctors and other health practitioners, sociologists, educators, journalists, anthropologists, publishers, National Academy of Engineering members, communication professionals, and even museum curators…
…Having such a diversity of interests present at a meeting of the preeminent professional organization for the subdiscipline of ethics is significant. Heterogeneity to this degree is uncharacteristic of the specialist internal economy that dominates the current practice of philosophy.
Re-engineering Ethics, Kelli Barr and Wenlong Lu « Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective.