Simon Paynton

jakelafort wrote:
Accountable to others for what?

The subject has made an agreement with the experimenter.  Agreements have normative force: instinctively we feel we should stick to them.  This is the manipulation in my opinion.

Autumn wrote:
I wonder if all of them know what they’ve lined up for or if some just got sucked in out of compulsive habit.

Some people are sobbing.  It’s a very sombre and emotional event.

jakelafort wrote:
feeling moral means obeying an authority figure?

It’s not that exactly.  The hypothesis of Dill and Darwall is that morality is that for which we can be held accountable by others.  So, if we can be held accountable for something, it’s a moral matter.

However, if someone hijacks that responsibility to be held accountable, if t…[Read more]

@jakelafort – I don’t know, it makes sense to me.  The subjects were personally accountable to an authority figure they’d made a personal agreement with.  That’s what felt moral about it.  When the people being “electrocuted” were in the room, then the subjects’ compassion took over and they felt accountable to the “victims”.

On the Milgram experiments, from “Moral Psychology as Accountability” by Brendan Dill and Stephen Darwall:

Consider, finally, the Milgram experiments. Milgram’s subjects were willing to undertake the aversive task of delivering shocks because of the forceful demands of the experimenter, to whom they were held personally accountable. Even if the s…

[Read more]

Autumn wrote:
It is unlikely there will ever be an amount of good a British monarch can do in our lifetimes that will tip that scale back.

The British monarchs benefit Britain.  As for other countries, I agree, it’s debateable.

Autumn wrote:
Yet it’s difficult to characterize her as a force for good.

Arguably, the Queen was a force for good – for the UK, on the world stage, and also, domestically.  For the commonwealth?  It’s always good when nations cooperate for peace.

I believe the Scottish aren’t so keen on the royalty because many of them want to break away from the UK, and resented it when the Queen said she was Queen of Scotland, Wales, England and Northern Ireland.  Similarly, Northern Irish nationalists.

Not everyone in the UK is a monarchist.  Some people are republicans, who want to do away with the monarchy, on purely ideological grounds.