Ethics of Selgiman's experiment

A slight deviation from my posting schedule - I discovered a recent article by Martin Seligman on the ethics of his experiments on dogs. I've long been inclined to question the reasoning by which justified the experiments as described in Learned Optimism, though was hesitant to do so as I am aware that his position may have since changed (indeed, in Helplessness: On Depression, Development and Death he does not express any qualms about his experiments - this of course does not mean that they were not troubling him).

I was very interested to learn that his ethicist friend he'd mentioned earlier was in fact Robert Nozick. But I don't want to get caught up on this for now.

Seligman seeks to justify the suffering he causes to the dogs in his experiment through what we might want to call "awesome utility" (that is as in the ethical principle of utility aka the principle of the greatest happiness for the greatness number) Here the suffering caused to the dogs through the experiments is far far less than the suffering prevented by utilising the results of these experiments. Nozick gives the comparison of experiments on animals that were used to discover the small pox vaccine.

Is an appeal to "awesome utility" enough? I have my doubts - can we justify inflicting any suffering if it prevents many times more? In his Critique of Utilitarianism, Bernard Williams gives a number of compelling examples of where this just doesn't seem clear. The one that sticks in my mind is when someone threatens to kill a group of indians unless you take a gun and shoot one. I certainly don't think one could ever be obliged to shoot the one indian. I don't think the value of life, or of happiness and suffering, is quantative in this way.

I'm not going to attempt to give a breakdown of the flaws in utilitarianism for now, and I realise what I'm saying doesn't really constitute an argument (hopefully I can develop this later). But my strong feeling is that in the situation Seligman described, there was no right answer. Inflicting the pain on the dogs was wrong - but failing to take action which would prevent suffering for many more would have also been wrong. Where I take issue with Selgiman is, I think, is when he sounds an upbeat note on an issue that is essentially irresolvable.

(That is, if there was really no alternative experiments. I always wonder if Seligman could have replaced the stick with a carrot in his experiments - teach some dogs that there's nothing they can do to get a reward, and others that they can if they follow the right course of action. Wouldn't this still be learned helplessness?)

Now, there's a lot that's of interest here - and in the attitudes expressed in the responses to his articles (including a potential challenge the validity of my Can Dogs Hope? little project which I'll have to address). I've not a hope of covering it all here - so I'll probably intersperse Can Dogs Hope with a more detailed consideration of these issues.

But next - onto Luc Bovens.