My first thought is similar to cognative's final thought.
Trying to define "being coerced" is the trip-up here, because that's looking at the victim's state. Coercion is an action, so we should be looking at the mugger's actions to determine whether something counts as coercion.
It strikes me as "coersion" if the person offering the choice has, themselves, chosen (and announced their choice) to do something detrimental to you if you do not choose to do as they ask.
Thus, my choice to give someone a sandwich or watch them starve is not coersion on their part, because they are not choosing to starve. A choice involving no other people, such as between dropping my wallet of a cliff to grab a handhold or falling off the cliff myself, cannot be coersion.
Where the threatened detriment is particularly minor, so is the coercion. Threatening to kill a bunny isn't much of a threat (What's the detriment to me? I'd feel bad for the bunny for a few seconds), so any coercion based upon that threat would be pretty lame. "Everyone's going to think you're lame" is a strong threat to some ten-year-olds (and some emotional ten-year-olds), but to few others.
I think this bears more thought, though. I'll see if people feel like discussing this at Philosophy Dinner. :-)
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Date: 2005-08-23 04:50 pm (UTC)Trying to define "being coerced" is the trip-up here, because that's looking at the victim's state. Coercion is an action, so we should be looking at the mugger's actions to determine whether something counts as coercion.
It strikes me as "coersion" if the person offering the choice has, themselves, chosen (and announced their choice) to do something detrimental to you if you do not choose to do as they ask.
Thus, my choice to give someone a sandwich or watch them starve is not coersion on their part, because they are not choosing to starve. A choice involving no other people, such as between dropping my wallet of a cliff to grab a handhold or falling off the cliff myself, cannot be coersion.
Where the threatened detriment is particularly minor, so is the coercion. Threatening to kill a bunny isn't much of a threat (What's the detriment to me? I'd feel bad for the bunny for a few seconds), so any coercion based upon that threat would be pretty lame. "Everyone's going to think you're lame" is a strong threat to some ten-year-olds (and some emotional ten-year-olds), but to few others.
I think this bears more thought, though. I'll see if people feel like discussing this at Philosophy Dinner. :-)