The Man Who Shocked The World: Case Study

The case study that I have chosen for this particular paper comes under the section ‘Thinking Critically 1.2’ titled ‘The Man Who Shocked the World’. The case study mainly revolves around a controversial psychological experiment conducted by Dr. Stanley Milgram, a 28-year-old psychologist at Yale University who was also a Harvard graduate with a PhD. He basically chose to study human behavior and provide insights on the capacity of the members of the human race to inflict harm on each other. In order to carry out this study, he advertised for and chose participants from the general public who were only told that they would be volunteers in an experiment on punishment and learning.
The set-up of the experiment was such that the ‘teacher’ in
Utilitarianism (according to the classical approach) argues that the ‘morally right action is the action that produces the most good’ (Driver, 2014). If understood entirely in terms of the results or the consequences produced by an action, then it can be argued according to utilitarianism that the best moral action is the one that produces the best consequences. The strength of this theory according to me is that it endorses as right the actions that are morally good for everybody, not just the one who does it or is affected by it. Also, according to the classical theory of utilitarianism, impartiality is an important value that must be present when a morally right action with the right consequences is being carried out (Driver, 2014). The weakness of this theory according to me is that ‘good’ is often equated with ‘pleasure’ in utilitarianism which can create a lot of misunderstandings and lead to wrong conclusions being derived out of situations. When analyzing the case study under consideration through the lens of utilitarianism, one can argue that Dr. Milgram conducted the experiment for the overall good of the human community because he came up with revelations that he argues explains the innate behavior of human beings submitting to authority.
Universal ethics can be described as the set of rules by which a person or a group of people or an action and/or a group of actions are judged as being either good, evil or neutral and applies to the universe (i.e. everybody in the universe) regardless of dividing factors such as class, color, race, creed, religion, nationality, personal ideas, etc. The emphasis of the universal ethics as being devoid of anything ‘personal’ is based on four conditions: It applies to all persons, it applies to all acts and is comprehensive in nature, it is based on logical reason without any illogical element and finally it is premised on non-arbitrary conditions and is grounded in empirical reality (“Universal Ethic”, 2010). The positive features of this particular ethical theory are that they are uniform and do not discriminate. The concept of global citizenship that is a recent political idea can be imagined when considering this theory. However, the main issue that I have with this theory is that it I believe it has a tendency towards homogenization. What I mean is that all actions that are good come under the ambit of good universal ethics according to this theory. However, how can we classify something as essentially ‘good’? Good for whom? What good? Is your good different from my good? These questions cannot be impressively answered using this ethical theory. When analyzing this particular case study under the