Empirical Evidence: the late 1960s, Stanley Milgram,[i] a professor at Yale University conducted a controversial series of experiments in which he ran an advertisement in the local New Haven newspaper for subjects to participate in experiments at Yale University involving the teaching process. The “subject” was strapped to an electric chair while answering questions with a “Teacher” in another room that would punish wrong answers with an electric shock. Unbeknownst to the Teachers, the chair was fake and the experiment was being done to test obedience on the Teachers controlling the “electricity.” The experiment was done to people at various ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. Some were paid their time while others volunteered. Eventually he even took the experiment to different countries and cultures.
From Milgram’s results, Hauser concludes that obedience to authority is a fundamental aspect of human nature and characteristic of early childhood where we are exposed to our parent’s rules.[1] Hauser believes there is a biological trait for obedience as well as one for exercising Power.[2]
Matt Ridley[ii] tells us in his book “The Origins of Virtue” that in game theory the “sucker” mentality is highly successful especially when people only interact one time.[3] It wouldn’t be hard to extrapolate how easily this premise could be applied to anyone utilizing all of the Power the United States can offer.
What would be a useful instrument for isolating a decision as a biological process?
In “Will Genomics do More for Metaphysics than Locke,” Alex Rosenberg[iii] argued that there are too many studies around evolution that work with a lot of “ifs” which makes it difficult to prove evolutionary causes. He systematically lists all the different studies we’d have to do to isolate one phenome as well as find ancient relatives of our species to see how our extinct counterpart failed because of the lack of this one attribute.[4] Computers have the ability to analyze huge amounts of information at the bat of an eye. I think Rosenberg is selling us short for even if isolation was as complicated as finding a needle in the proverbial haystack. In fact National Geographic is doing an amazing study called the Genographic Project whose mission is to trace everybody’s ancestry back to the first migration out of Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago. There’s no telling what we’ll be able to do in just another decade!
[1] Hauser, M. ibid Morality pp. 138-141
[2] Milgram, S. (1963). Behavior study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371-378
[3] Ridley, M. (1996). The origins of virture. New York: Penguin Books
[4] Rosenberg, A. (2006). Will genomics do more for metaphysics than Locke? In Boniolo G. and De Anna G. (Eds.), Evolutionary Ethics and Contemporary Biology, (Pp. 178-198). New York: Cambridge University Press
[i] Stanley Milgram: Obedience to Authority
[quote] The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous import, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.”
[ii] Matt Ridley: Scientific Journalist & Nature/Nurture proponent
Popular books such as The Red Queen (1993), The Origins of Virtue (1996), Genome (1999), Nature via Nurture (2003) have been an enormous part of explaining the very complicated topic of our human genes relationship with their environment. As a species, we have no patience for shifting paradigms so should be very grateful to Dr. Ridley for using his journalistic talents to assist our course to reality.
[iii] Alex Rosenberg, PhD
Joined the Duke faculty in 2000. Previously, he was professor of philosophy at Syracuse University, University of California, Riverside and Director of the Honors Program at the University of Georgia. Professor Rosenberg has also been a visiting professor and fellow of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Minnesota, as well as the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Oxford University. His interests focus on problems in metaphysics, mainly surrounding causality, the philosophy of social sciences, especially economics, and most of all, the philosophy of biology, in particular the relationship between molecular, functional and evolutionary biology. He serves as co-director of the Duke University Center for the Philosophy of Biology.
No comments:
Post a Comment