The case that Milgram makes.

Abstract

IS the description that the social psychologist Stanley Milgram offers of the results of his obedience experiments compatible with the kind of moral vindication that he presents for his experiments? Specifically, I am concerned with whether Milgram can consistently claim that (1) His laboratory subjects behaved in a shockingly immoral way (p. 194).' and yet that (2) There was nothing immoral in carrying out the obedience experiments.2 In this essay I shall be concerned to argue that the reasons Milgram gives for concluding with (2) would, if accepted, entail the dubiousness of (1). As we shall see, this consequence is crucial since if( 1) is doubtful the Milgram experiments lose much of their interest as studies in obedience. Thus I shall try to show that Milgram's personal moral defence has the self-defeating result that if it is successful his experiments are otiose.