Gradually escalated demands erase the moral threshold of an action
Evidence
Subjects enter the experiment recognizing some commitments to cooperate with the experimenter; after all, they have agreed to participate, taken his money, and probably to some degree endorse the aims of the advancement of science. (Milgram’s subjects were told that they would participate in a study meant to discover ways of making learning more efficient.) When the learner makes his first error, subjects are asked to shock him. The shock level is 15 volts. A 15-volt shock is entirely harmless, imperceptible. There is no moral issue here. Of course the next shock is more powerful, but only slightly so. Indeed every shock is only slightly more powerful than the last. The quality of the subject’s action changes from something entirely blameless to something unconscionable, but by degrees. Where exactly should the subject stop? At what point is the divide between these two kinds of action crossed? How is the subject to know? It is easy to see that there must be a line; it is not so easy to see where that line ought to be. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 450
Categorization
- XREF: The slippery incrementalism described here parallels how exclusionary policies toward targeted groups escalate imperceptibly - directly transferable to the reader’s Islamophobia analysis. — connects to: Distance between act and consequence erases the act’s moral significance entirely — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 102; Articulated moral rule systems inevitably generate internal rule conflicts — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 220; Acting-trust pressure can rearrange beliefs to justify exceptions (+1 more)
Related
- Distance between act and consequence erases the act’s moral significance entirely (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Acting-trust pressure can rearrange beliefs to justify exceptions
#expands(0.80) - Articulated moral rule systems inevitably generate internal rule conflicts
#expands(0.75) — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 220 - Automated targeting thresholds centralize atrocity into a single parameter-setting decision.
#exemplifies(0.70)