Choice and coercion

[eirias]

It's ethics time!

It's a familiar story: You're a teller at a bank and a guy comes in with a loaded gun and says, "Give me all your money or else I'll shoot." Ostensibly, he's offering you a choice between cooperation and death. However, ethically, most people do not consider this to be a real choice. Because the alternative is so noxious, it's said, it is not actually an alternative; this situation counts as forcing a person to do something against his will.

What I'm wondering is, how noxious does the "or else" have to be for the above to hold? Does it have to be lethal, or even physical? What is the line between choice and coercion?

Comments

[blimix.livejournal.com]

Say I'm trying to rob the bank but this time I offer not a gun but an unopened packet of peanuts.

I think I covered this when I said, "Where the threatened detriment is particularly minor, so is the coercion." Pretty much, anything you want to say about the quality of the threat you could say about the coercion. Peanuts are not a threat at all, hence threatening the bank teller with peanuts does not constitute coercion. Or you could say that peanuts are an unsuccessful threat, and an attempted robbery with them constitutes unsuccessful coercion.

The person being threatened is implicitly part of the equation, in that the threat has to be a threat to them. Most types of threats involved in coercion are threatening to everybody, hence this portion of the equation is usually irrelevant. However, a peanut allergy, or extreme emotional insecurity, for example, could make an ineffective threat into an effective one.

As for the sandwich thing, whether it is or is not a demand, it does not threaten significant detriment. (Hence, I didn't bother specifying whether there was a demand.) The threat involved in a hunger strike is not starvation - it is negative publicity.

[ex-miang438.livejournal.com]

Hmm. The following is in no way meant to put words into your mouth; I'm just trying to work through an interesting argument I think I'm picking up from your examples.

It seems to me that a distinction needs to be made between "coercion" and ordinary "influence," and I think the sandwich example gets to that. If you walk by me, and you know I'm going to starve if you don't hand over your sandwich, you may feel guilty. If that guilt prompts you to hand the person the sandwich, you have been influenced, but not coerced, to do so. Or...not?

There is (was?) an interesting decade-long debate in the helping literature about whether altruism really exists, or whether all prosocial behavior ultimately comes down to egotistical motives (feeling good, guilt reduction, attention, what-have-you). This coercion/influence argument feels like the flip side of that, somehow; is it possible to exert influence without coercing behavior, or is all influence ultimately just a form of (admittedly mild at times) coercion? That is, if I stare at you hungrily while you walk past, swinging your sandwich bag about, perhaps I am in fact attempting to coerce you into feeding me -- if I know (or have reason to suspect) that guilt is likely to be a strong motivating force for you, then I could be seen as deliberately creating a strong, unpleasant situation for you, in a sense "forcing" you to give me your sandwich even without the direct use of physical force.

In my personal view, by the way, coersion requires a) an immediate strong threat, preferably to life or safety, and b) the use of force (physical or otherwise). I wouldn't personally see guilt as a form of coercion, but maybe that's just because I can't really be guilted into doing very much. :D I also subscribe to the utilitarian "choice" belief delineated in some of the arguments above, and I'm big on personal responsibility...so if even normal interpersonal influence can be classified as coercion, there's really no place left for personal responsibility for choices. But, I figure if this discussion is going to go all philosophical, I may as well introduce another point of view to consider.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

This is an interesting response and one I haven't really dealt with. I'd argue that guilting a person into doing something can be coercive, yes, and I hadn't thought about that aspect. I would argue that some confessions received by priests represent just this kind of coercion.

You and several other people have said that coercion requires the use of force. My problem with that is, how do you define force? - if I had a good definition of force, the original question would be answered. :) Some people, I think, mean only the threat of physical force applied to the recipient's body, but that rules out blackmail and hostage-taking from consideration and I think everyone would agree that those are coercive. But once you include emotional factors, you open the door for guilt trips and the like to be considered coercive, and that's just a big moral grey area full of, like, everyone you know, because seriously, whose mom has NOT done this at some point?

I think one thing this discussion strikes home for me is a more general point, that the morality of an interpersonal action is highly dependent on the characteristics of the recipient of that action. Which is not particularly new (leora wrote a nice screed against the Golden Rule many months ago) but I think it really complicates any attempt to form a coherent moral framework in a way no one ever mentioned when I was growing up. (But hey, why poison children's minds with moral complexity when it's so much easier to give them a full Disney library and a copy of the Ten Commandments?)

[eirias.livejournal.com]

I think maybe I've figured out where I'm stuck.

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?

[blimix.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Lots of food for thought!

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?

Yes. Also, the fact that "coerce" (like "threat") has a negative connotation does not mean that it is always a moral infraction. For example, to coerce a mugger into leaving you alone is not morally wrong. You are within your rights to defend yourself, and to answer a threat with a threat. (Though it may not always be a good idea.)

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. :)

Of course I'm an absolutist. That means, for example, that I think that it's not okay for Dick Cheney to murder people for profit, even if the Dick Cheney thinks there's nothing wrong with it. I am perfectly aware that no thing or action can be evaluated in isolation. (Does a dog have Buddha nature?) An action performed upon one person is different from the same action performed upon another person. In the peanut allergy case, the same action might be "feeding" one person and "poisoning" another.

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.

My apologies. This portion of the equation is usually not relevant to whether an act counts as coercion, which is what I thought was in question. The much subtler question of the degree of coercion is certainly affected by such subtle influences as the victim's level of susceptibility to the threat.

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.

As we approach a slippery slope...

Would it be coercion if my professor said, "Hand in this paper by four tomorrow or you're out of the program"?

The professor is presumably within her or his rights to threaten repercussions for a failure to live up to your responsibilities. It is coercion by denotation, but of a sort to which the negative connotation of the word (and hence its common usage) is inappropriate. I would not, in describing the act, say "She coerced you," despite its literal truth, because of the untrue connotation. "Pressured" would be a more appropriate word.

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?

I think that my answer has parts of "If not" and "If so". I acknowledge that allowing for the gradation of "coercion" makes the boundary for the definition very tricky to mark. Your example sits right on that boundary, but does not, I think, invalidate its existence.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Let us say for the moment that all "if you ... then I will" statements constitute an implied threat of force (leora's insightful bit on ultimata notwithstanding). Let us say also that some of these are legitimate and others are not (the difference between "coercion" and "pressure"). One thing I have just thought of that might delineate the two is the set of initial conditions for social interaction that preceded the ultimatum. In many relationships, it is clear at the outset what power each individual may legitimately exercise within the relationship. For instance, bosses are allowed to ask their salaried employees to work extra, unpaid hours in order to get caught up on an important project. This is part of what it means to be salaried. On the other hand, bosses are not allowed to do this with hourly employees. In that case, "Stay late or I'll fire you" would be grounds to haul The Man into court for keeping you down.

The trouble is that many, maybe most, human relationships do not come with a set of initial conditions that everyone agrees upon. Romantic relationships are an obvious example of this (and maybe this is part of why most people screw at least one of them up in some preventable way). Friendships can be another - basically anything where power is supposed to be evenly distributed or where the balance of power is not universally understood. Even in parenting the lines aren't clear anymore as our views of children evolve; "Do as I say or I'll beat you" used to be thought of as not at all coercive (in the pejorative sense) but as good parenting, but now in many circles it's strongly frowned upon.