Choice and coercion
Aug. 23rd, 2005 08:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eiriasIt'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?
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?
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-23 04:18 pm (UTC)There's no line - everything is a choice. A rational being will make the choice that maximizes utility to the best of his knowledge. Clearly, different beings will have different heuristics for evaluating utility. "Give me all of your money or I will shave your head" will be utterly ineffective on some people, and result in an instant cash handover for others.
Coercion could be defined as anytime where all alternatives are worse (lower utility, or at least expected utility) than the demand. From a legal standpoint, that's more difficult. One thought is that coercion can use the same definition, except that the members of the jury need to have roughly the same view of utility as the subject. (Or at least, to agree that the subject's view is valid.)