Week 4--Empirical Non-Foundationalism/The Unsounded Ocean

In class on Tuesday, part of the discussion focused on why, in Moby Dick, the crew would follow Captain Ahab, even though they know that he is mad. This, in turn, brought to mind a number of ideas that I had been introduced to in the few psychology courses I have taken.

Someone above already made this connection, and commented that this reminded them of the Asch conformity experiments, in which a participant in a group was asked to match two lines, and would conform to the majority opinion of which two lines matched, even when that opinion was wrong. I thought of a similar experiment, conducted by Stanley Milgram, in which participants, believing they were in a learning study, were asked to give electric shocks to another participant (actually a man hired by the experimenters, and never actually shocked) if he answered a question wrong. With each wrong answer, the “voltage” increased, and the other “participant” became more and more distressed. Many people went through the entire experiment, believing that they were delivering the highest shock possible to another person; these people were utterly psychologically normal. Milgram believed that one of the reasons participants went so far in an activity they believed was harming another person was due to the fact that an authority was demanding their cooperation; a psychologist was in the room with them as they delivered the shocks, and more than that, they believed that they were involved in an experiment that would benefit the science of psychology as a whole. Perhaps something similar, at least in part, is going on with Ahab’s crew. Ahab is the captain, the authority whom they must obey so as to survive (As someone pointed out in class, if all of the crew does not immediately obey an order, it could result in loss of life, or loss of a catch, which could result in loss of quality of life). In a sense, Ahab also stands for the institution of whaling as a whole, an institution these men respect enough to become a part of to earn a living. If Ahab in some way equals whaling to them, some of their motivation to follow him could be that they want to work for the benefit of the institution as a whole.

Another memory from past psychology classes came back to me, namely the concept of Terror Management Theory. According to this idea, everyone is terrified of death, and therefore clings to their culture (Though this is somewhat problematic, because the definition of this word is problematic), which acts as a sort of psychological barrier against the thought of death. Research into this phenomenon has found that subjects, when forced to think about death, will have a much more positive attitude toward something representative of their culture (In the experiment I am thinking of, subjects, around the time of the 2004 presidential election, gave a higher approval rating to George W. Bush than John Kerry when forced to think about death, despite professed political beliefs; the researchers believe that the subjects, when confronted with the idea of death, cling to a representative of their national identity, one aspect of their culture). In a certain way, this dovetails with the way that the Milgram experiment relates to Ahab: He is a representative of the culture these men have chosen, and so they cling to him, sane or insane. In this light, it is interesting that this representative of their culture is attempting to kill what he understands to represent an underlying malicious force in the universe, Moby Dick. Death itself is another way this malicious force manifests itself, if it indeed does exist. So, this man that the crew is following because they are afraid of death (if we are using Terror Management Theory) is, by destroying Moby Dick, striking a blow indirectly at death as well. No wonder he commands such obedience.