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

[darlox.livejournal.com]

That's painfully subjective. There are people (probably reading this right now) that would have the same coercion reaction to the option "Give me all your money, or else I'll kill this baby bunny." On the other hand, if that baby bunny was the one eating all the vegetables in my garden lately, I would smile and wave.

Courtrooms are chock-full of cases where people pull "involuntary compulsion" out of their arse as either a defense or a complaint. I'd argue it's about 50/50 where that scenario is reasonable, vs. when it's completely disingenuous, albeit convenient, lie. Is it sexual harassment - arguably a form of coercion - if I tell a female employee "aw, come out and party with us tonight, or else everyone's going to think you're lame on Monday" ?? Bet the knee-jerk reactions to that question are equally 50/50 split.

[cognative.livejournal.com]

Of course I'm going to say it's subjective and full of grey areas. So there are two choices each with some level of desirability. That level is up to the person who is making the choice. If the levels are horribly mismatched then it seems more like coercion. How mismatched they have to be in order to qualify as coercion is also subjective. I'm sure there are extreme examples that we'll all agree on, but there are also many examples that would be a toss up. Also I would say a lot of times the intention behind the person presenting the choice could point towards coercion.

[drspiff.livejournal.com]

I think another part of that dilemma that you have to consider is the value you place on the "money" or commodity you are asked to hand over. If it is just something material then most people wouldn't feel that's worth making a stand over. However if there is a principle to be defended, then there is a class of person who would without thinking defend that with their life.
When the "or else" includes harm to other people then the equation changes again because the principle of harming others indirectly through your own actions comes into play.
It is a very complex dilemma, which is why most banks and businesses unambiguously instruct their clerks how to act in such a situation. An authority figure telling you how you should act alleviates any responsibility felt by most people. Whether it is moral or ethical to allow someone to simplify a dilemma for you is another can of worms.

[roamin-umpire.livejournal.com]

This is not the way I look at things, but I feel like being devil's advocate...

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.)

[kirin]

I haven't read others' comments yet, but one criteria that strikes me is this: if the "other" choice violates the target's rights, then so does the holdup. If you want to put things on some sort of ethical "scale", I guess I'd say the holdup will be less "bad" than just carrying out the threat, but linearly proportional to the "badness" of the threat. Does that make any sense? As for where you put various dividing lines of ethical badness, that seems fairly arbitrary. I suppose I'll go read comments now...

[blimix.livejournal.com]

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. :-)

[leora.livejournal.com]

I don't view the coercion concept as useful... at least not in the sense people seem to mean it.

I think a more important concept is: did you make a reasonable choice given the pressuring factors. Or you can call them coercive factors, except they don't need any sentience behind them.

Example: I worked as a desk attendant and we had a cash box. The cash box was often worth between $200 and $300. We were under orders if ever held up to hand over the cashbox and do our best to not get hurt. If we could, we should try to remember what the person looked like and report it as soon afterwards as possible, but we weren't supposed to risk our lives for $200-$300 (or less at the other desks). So, there's a significant enough pressure to make turning over the cashbox what a reasonable person should do.

If I were in the military and being tortured and threatened with death for military secrets, I would be expected to let myself be tortured and die for the cause. Horrible pressuring factors, but I assume they don't trust serious secrets with people who haven't accepted this.

If I were in a fire, I would run out, and if I had to, I'd leave the cashbox behind. Better to take it, but if it's endangering my life to try, I wouldn't. No one is telling me what to do, but the risk is great and the benefit to getting the cashbox out is fairly small if the whole dorm is on fire anyway.

This is why I've moved toward the steal the bread to feed your hungry family side of the ethical dilemma. Starving to death is too strong a pressuring factor and having some bread stolen is too small a cost. Plus, a society that can feed its people and chooses not to deserves to have its bread stolen.