Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-94d59 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-27T15:37:13.760Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Deception, Obedience and Authority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Peter Ingram
Affiliation:
The Queen's University of Belfast

Extract

In his article, ‘Milgram's Shocking Experiments’, in Philosophy 52 (1977), Professor Steven C. Patten rejects Milgram's evidence for a Hobbesian view of human nature on three grounds: that the claim that a large number of the subjects in the experiments were not deceived is not convincing, that there is a conceptual conflation by Milgram of two senses of obedience, and that a proper understanding of kinds of authority will explain in an acceptable way the behaviour of most of the small number of subjects who might remain to support Milgram's conclusions. Patten's arguments in support of all three grounds are unsatisfactory.

Type
Discussion
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1979

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)