In cases where you'd say that the coercion is relatively minor, does that mean that the moral infraction of having coerced a person is also proportionately minor? Because what that would mean is that the _moral_ judgment of an action, not just its coercive or non-coercive nature, would depend in some way on the recipient of that action - that it can't be judged independently of knowledge of the person. Which would be weird, no? Certainly it seems off-kilter given that I know you're a moral absolutist. :)
I disagree with you that this portion of the equation is usually not relevant, because you'll get some variance in how noxious particular threats are to individuals. And I think that if you accept things like a bag of peanuts as potentially coercive devices, or that coercion can happen in degrees, you open up a pretty wide field of human interactions to a coercive interpretation. Would it be coercion if my professor said, "Hand in this paper by four tomorrow or you're out of the program"? If not, why not? If so, are we defining coercion in such a way that it becomes trivial? If all rules are coercive, what is their moral import?
no subject
In cases where you'd say that the coercion is relatively minor, does that mean that the moral infraction of having coerced a person is also proportionately minor? Because what that would mean is that the _moral_ judgment of an action, not just its coercive or non-coercive nature, would depend in some way on the recipient of that action - that it can't be judged independently of knowledge of the person. Which would be weird, no? Certainly it seems off-kilter given that I know you're a moral absolutist. :)
I disagree with you that this portion of the equation is usually not relevant, because you'll get some variance in how noxious particular threats are to individuals. And I think that if you accept things like a bag of peanuts as potentially coercive devices, or that coercion can happen in degrees, you open up a pretty wide field of human interactions to a coercive interpretation. Would it be coercion if my professor said, "Hand in this paper by four tomorrow or you're out of the program"? If not, why not? If so, are we defining coercion in such a way that it becomes trivial? If all rules are coercive, what is their moral import?