Free will is an illusion, no one has free will. Because of Biological and social obstacles free-will is just a figment of the imagination. Certain social aspects of life create only one path for society and there's no way around it. Schizophrenia is a hereditary brain disability, which leaves the victim unable to rationalize their decisions because of symptoms like hallucinations and delusions this is the perfect example of biological reasons why people don't have free will. This ties into importance of whether or not having the power to make decisions determines how much free free will a person has.
Zimbardo, P. G. (2006), On rethinking the psychology of tyranny: The BBC prison study. British
Journal of Social Psychology, 45: 47–53. doi:
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Zimbardo creates a commentary on his evaluation of rethinking the philosophy of tyranny. Tyranny is when a government that mistreats and oppresses their people. Zimbardo goes into detail on the differences between his “privileged position” in the SPE and the comparison to the BBC experiment. He uses his commentary to promote his book which talks about his acclaimed privileged opinion and how he felt. The commentary provided an evaluation of the scientific legitimacy.
The philosophy of tyranny are the various actions and reactions to the different parts of the experiments. In Zimbardo's experiment prisoners resisted throughout the experiment. When they were segregated they were regularly ineffectual. In any case, when they cooperated as a gathering their resistance was significantly more effective. In fact, toward the end of the main day the Prisoners were on top and the Guards were in
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doi: 10.1111.j.1530-2415.2007.00142.x
Mastroianni gives a review on the book from the view of someone who may or may not be a philosopher. Those who aren't philosophers would be drawn to the author's point about the Abu Ghraib. Zimbardo made the claim that the perpetrators were bad apples. However their thought that they had free will was a delusion. Those prisoners did not have free at all, were tortured and deindividualized.
The Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of Baghdad, was one of the biggest prisons with various torture mechanisms and vile living environments. People were sent here to be tortured for committing terrorist activities. There were various torture techniques such as the Box Electrocution technique. During this exercise prisoners were placed in small cells on these small boxes. They were told that if they fell off they would be electrocuted.
Shuttleworth, Martyn. "Stanford Prison Experiment." Experiment-Resources. com (2008).
The Stanford Prison Experiment was an experiment used to see how people would react under Authority. The experiment consisted of 10 prisoners and 11 guards, all male men. Many of the guards mistreated the prisoners, by harassing them in ways that were inhumane and and could make a person question their morals. One of the prisoners even quit the study early, this prisoner had only been there about two days and count handle the mental
Szegedy-Maszak, Marianne. "The Abu Ghraib Prison Scandal: Sources of Sadism." Writing and Reading for ACP Composition. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Custom, 2009. 210-12. Print.
Wole Soyinka's essay "Every Dictator's Nightmare" in the April 18, 1999 edition of the New York Times magazine seems almost prescient in light of the events currently occurring geopolitically. The recent events occurred in Egypt are certainly representative of the themes present in Soyinka's essay; “the idea that certain fundamental rights are inherent to all humanity" (476). Soyinka, the 1986 noble peace prizewinner for literature, portrays not only his well-formed persona in his essay, but also his well formed thoughts, devoid of literary naiveté common in so many of today’s writers. The essay portrays societies as corrupted, but with some elements of innate nobility. The existence of societies is guaranteed by the realization that every individual has undeniable basic rights. Soyinka also presents an overview of the enslavement of individual cultures; to the forces of religion, dictatorship, economic pressures, forced labor, and ideology; presenting the reader strong examples of the world's failure to respect individual human rights throughout history. In his essay, Soyinka’s explores the employment of irony and contradiction, in explaining the paradoxes that have riddled the historical search for just societies.
The Implications of the Stanford Prison Experiment In 1971 Dr Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment in the basement of Stanford University. This involved imprisoning nine volunteers in a mock up of Stanford prison, which was policed by nine guards (more volunteers). These guards had complete control over the prisoners. They could do anything to the prisoners, but use physical violence.
In the beginning of the play Romeo and Juliet make many rash decisions that change the course of the play. Such as, when Romeo decides to sneak into the Capulet’s garden to have a conversation with Juliet. If Romeo was spotted by any of the guards or a resident of the Capulet household, he would have been captured and killed. When Juliet asks how Romeo snuck into the garden he replies to her, “With love’s light wings did I o’erperch these walls, For stony limits cannot hold love out…” (2.2.66-67). Romeo states that he snuck in with love’s wings and that nothing can stand in the way of love. Romeo shows that his love for Juliet can lead him to make rash decisions and not to think his actions through. An example of Juliet making a rash decision
He explores a multitude of concepts that revolves around the effects of situational factor on the behavior for an individual or group. In particular, a theory I wanted to explore is Zimbardo’s view on power and the impact of systematic structure. For instance, in Chapter 10, Zimbardo writes that “Power is a concern when people either have a lot of it and need to maintain it or when they have not much power and want to get more. However, power itself becomes a goal for many because of all the resources at the disposal of the powerful” (Zimbardo). In accordance to this view, power is desired by many, and often results in cases of struggles for power. In the instance of the Stanford Prison Experiment ,the struggle for power can be illustrated in the guard’s abusive behavior in order to establish and maintain power, and the prisoner’s rebellion as means to fight back against mistreatment. Beyond the scope of the experiment, an example of power can be seen in the monopoly of the pharmaceutical industry on the cost of prescription drugs. Many pharmaceutical companies create a monopoly on the basis of patent laws over specific drugs. Subsequently, these companies are able to set high prices in order to maximize profit margins. While this may be beneficial for the pharmaceutical industry, patients are
Now sure, the Stanford prison guards didn’t go that far as the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib but the torture and abuse towards the prisoners became worse by the day indicating they could have gone as far as Abu Ghraib. However, in both cases there are unusual punishments and cruelty. This was due to the authority allowing it, ordering it, just didn’t care or didn’t know. Like the Stanford Prison Experiment, Zimbardo didn’t do anything to stop the abuses at the mock prison but allowed it.
Stanley Milgram conducted the experiment to put participants into immoral situations to obey an authority figure of some measure, and he tested their performance and willingness, to participate in acts that strayed away from their belief of right and wrong. Zimbardo conducted an experiment in some ways similar. He conducted an experiment to see if people would assume the expected normal roles of what a prisoner is expected to do and what an authority figure like a prisoner guard is supposed to do. So both Zimbardo and Milgram at this point are trying to prove that authority and the social norm of how authorities should act generates psychological effects on their performance, as well as people who are expected to be below and obey an upper hand.
Subjects became so entranced in these roles that the guards started to behave as if they really were the guards of a true prison. Zimbardo had told them to think of themselves in this way and it led to the guards mentally abusing the prisoners with their cruel and degrading ro...
Even the researchers themselves began to lose sight of the reality of the situation. Zimbardo, who acted as the prison warden, overlooked the abusive behavior of the prison guards until graduate student Christina Maslach voiced objections to the conditions in the simulated prison and the morality of continuing the experiment. "Only a few people were able to resist the situational temptations to yield to power and dominance while maintaining some semblance of morality and decency; obviously I was not among that noble class," Zimbardo later wrote in his book The Lucifer Effect (Zimbardo, 2007). According to Zimbardo and his colleagues, the Stanford Prison Experiment demonstrates the powerful role that the situation can play in human behavior. Because the guards were placed in a position of power, they began to behave in ways they would not normally act in their everyday lives or in other situations. The prisoners, placed in a situation where they had no real control, became passive and
In August of 1971, American psychologist, Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment at Stanford University studying the behavioral and psychological consequences of becoming a prisoner or a prison guard. He wanted to observe how situational forces impacted human behavior. Zimbardo, along with prison experts, a film crew, and a former prison convict dramatically simulated a prison environment both physically and mentally in order to accurately observe the effects of the institution on its participants. This experiment later became known as the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment.
People have free will and are responsible for their actions. More specifically I believe in compatablism, which states that determinism and freedom are compatible. I believe that in the end we all have a specific place we finish, but it is through our actions and choices that lead us there. Take the example of a highway. People choose which lane they want to be in for the time they are traveling, but in the end they are going to end up at the same exit. As long as one is doing what they want to do, one is acting freely. This is harmonious with the underlying laws of being deterministic. Actions are determined by our thoughts, desires, and beliefs. Because they are determined by things such as these, they are appropriately our own actions.
Zimbardo, PhD. argues that the prison in Abu Ghraib was psychologically changed due to their abuse. Zimbardo says, “The line between good and evil is permeable.” Situations will pull people into acting ways they never have imagined before. The Stanford Prison Study was a film that brought college students in to play roles of prisoners and guards. After only six days the guards became abusive and brutal towards the prisoners. Zimbardo put on this experiment and found that “institutional forces and peer pressure lead normal student volunteer guards to disregard the potential harm of their actions on the other student
In Abu Ghraib, the prisoners’ faces were covered with hoods and the prison was covered up with walls that made the prison an island where morality was no longer there due to the three traits that the soldier went through. To understand how individuals can kill innocent children, women, men, and elders, Philip G. Zimbardo did The Stanford prison experiment. In the book, Zimbardo highlighted three psychological truths. The first is that the world is full of both evil and good, the barrier between the two is absorbent, and angels and devils can switch.
Zimbardo, P.G. (2004, May, 25). Journalist interview re: Abu Ghraib prison abuses: Eleven answers to eleven questions. Unpublished manuscript, Stanford Univesity.
This experiment gathered twenty-one young men and assigned half of them to be “prisoners” and the other half to be “guards”. Simply put, the point of the experiment was to simulate a prison and observe how the setting and the given roles affected the behavior of the young men. The men who were given the roles of guard were given a position of authority and acted accordingly. This alone strongly influenced the behavior of both the guards and the prisoners. The guards had a sense of entitlement, control, and power, while the prisoners had a feeling of resentment and rebellion. Social pressure also played a crucial role in the experiment. Many of the guards began to exploit their power by abusing, brutalizing, and dehumanizing the prisoners. Some of the other guards felt wrong about this abuse, but did nothing to put an end to it. Finally, the situation and setting of the experiment immensely altered the conduct of both the prisoners and guards. The setting of being in a prison caused many of the volunteers to act in ways that they may have normally not. Even though the setting of being in a prison was essentially pretend, the volunteers accepted the roles they were given and acted as if it was all a reality. The prisoners genuinely behaved as if they were indeed real prisoners, and the guards treated them likewise. The situation these volunteers