Free will ,coercion and Morality

Miscellaneous General
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The common view is to see morality as requiring voluntary choice.Moral or immoral acts can only be undertaken voluntarily.Rothbard holds this view in For a new Liberty ,the section on Pornography.It is also held by Ayn Rand. Further implications of this view are that under coercion an individuals actions can neither be moral nor immoral but amoral..Ok so this seems reasonable enough.Yes.Except that this means that nazi soldiers forced by their superiors are free from blame of having commiting their evil acts after all if moral or immoral acts can only be done voluntarily then the presence of coercion negates this.It also frees legislators from the evils of unjust laws or those forced to do harm at gunpoint -from blame.

If we think about it on a deeper level we come to a different view.

We can act voluntarily under coercion.We can choose whether or not to follow this coercion.Propaganda obviously plays a role too.If we can choice under coercion and still have free will then we can still be moral or immoral and still be blameworthy or worthy of praise.We then reformulate the rule to be this : it is more valuable or virtuous than moral acts be undertaken in absence of coercion.Moral acts undertaken under coercion have less value. why?

if someone is coerced to do something moral then it implies that they would not have done otherwise in absence of that coercion and also that they are just merely following orders without knowng why what they are doing is moral.It’s mindless obedience and thus less valuable than someone doing a good deed knowing even vaguely why it is good.

Ok fine. but this still leaves us with the problem of immoral acts under coercion .Are they less blameworthy?

it turns out they are actually worse than evil acts commited voluntarily.

that someone needs to be coerced to do an evil act implies that they would not have done othewise have the coercion been absent.This implies that they know in some sense for some reason that it would be a bad thing to do this act.Now under coercion this person can of course resist even though they know this could have dire consequences and I aknowledge that this will be a factor playing on their mind and so will bias their choices, however they still did the evil act knowing it was wrong and having the option to do otherwise.

I also admit that the person obeying the coercer is not necessarily agreeing with the coercer that they agree this evil act is acceptable or that the coercer is right to coerce them.thus this view does not imply that the society has consented to government.It in NO WAY NEGATES LIBERTARIANISM which was initially my concern.

Is this way of thinking about free will correct? It seems more sensible and logical than the first view.

do we need a new definition of free will ?

the implications of the second view are huge.Everyone who goes along with government laws or policies knowing that they are evil is evil. Soldiers who know they are killing innocents(I.e. anyone the war is supposed to be against in an unjust war) in unjust wars yet still do so are evil too .This could include a large group of the populous.

So it seems the choices are (1) all who do evil under coercion are blameless or (2) all who do evil under coercion knowing it is coercion are evil.

do you agree? disagree?

which view is correct? or is there a better 3rd view?

Am I right here?

can anyone find errors?

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You’re just talking about degrees of evil imo. If a man is ordered to kill another man and chooses to follow the order for fear of being reprimanded if he should choose not to follow the order, his act is still evil for sure. But is it the same as if a man chooses to go out and murder without being ordered to do so? Which man would you see as being more evil?

Also, you gotta ask yourself; how many people want to do evil but are unable to find an outlet for their desires so they try to find such an outlet where their acts will be more excusable because they can always say they were following orders?

Btw, I’m assuming your definition of evil here is something approximating malevolence; intentional harm.

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Most people don’t, which is why they believe it to exist. There objectively can be no correct answer because there is objectively no good and evil, there are only criteria which define acts as such.

I find your entire line of logic here incorrect, I am sorry. Your entire analysis rests upon one act being “evil”, I’m not going to get into what defines good and evil here, so let us simply assume that act A is evil. When I am coerced into doing act A you are correct in that I would not necessarily have done act A had I not been coerced, if force would not have been used against me. For a moment let us ignore the possibility that I would perform the act even if I were not coerced against.

Free will still exists under the model of coercion, therefore, you are saying, that if someone knows that act A is evil then they understand that they should not do it. However, they are suddenly being threatened by immorality, they do not WANT to perform act A but suddenly they are confronted with performing act A and bodily harm. They understand that act A is evil, but they do not want to be harmed, therefore you are saying that they are evil if they perform act A. because they understand that it is wrong and they still have a choice. Now it comes down to a matter of value. You are stating that although they value their life more than they do act A that they should not perform act A.

For the sake of argument let us pretend that this individual’s value for morality will change based upon your verdict, if you declare than an act is immoral then he will die for you, if you declare that this act is moral then he will perform the act. So the question is, does an act being coerced change the very nature of the action? If someone is pointing a gun to my head and tells me to kill does my killing change in its action? I have the choice to kill or not to kill? This becomes a matter of simple preference. I would say that it suddenly becomes acceptable for the individual to kill because he doesn’t want to die, he simply values his life and would not take the lives of others if it were left at that, but he wants to live, and so he is forced to kill. I may still have to strike him down if I cannot first reach his master, but it is not specifically his fault that he is doing that which he is doing, he simply performs a value judgment and the values are suddenly changed drastically.

That is where I believe that you are going wrong, you ignore the fact that because there is coercion inherently changes the very nature of the act itself. If I perform an act which is normally worthy of retribution uncoerced then, in general, I believe that this act does not necessitate retribution after the fact, although to prevent the act from taking place force is certainly acceptable. I consider the acts of a great deal of Nazi guards and soldiers still evil however, as I believe that a great deal of them would have performed the acts even had they been able to just stand up and leave.

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Volition does not cease even under coercion - this is an important observation. Rather than Nazis (they tend to easily inflame sentiment in debates), I prefer to use the illustration of a slave and slave-holder. The slave-holder does not actually force the slave to work, rather, he alters the “menu of suffering” from which the slave may choose. The slave may perform bone-grinding hard labor or he may suffer a brutal beating death. The potential of a brutal beating death for refusal to work does not imply the slave has no volition. His faculty of volition is still operational because, as Rothbard notes in many places, it is inalienable as a matter of physical fact.

The problem you are discussing is that of murder committed under duress. If the mob boss puts a gun in your hand and tells you to pull the trigger on an innocent man (with the obvious threat that if you don’t, you will be killed), are you immoral to act on his instructions? I think the answer is yes but I think the moral question is less important than the legal question. Right or wrong are you liable? The answer to this is definitely yes. It doesn’t matter if someone is going to kill you, if you pull the trigger, you are the cause of the homicide. Yes, it would suck if you were ever to be put in such a situation, but the legal theory of causality which Rothbard propounds in Ethics of Liberty entails this. Even more strongly, if the mob boss puts the gun in your hand and, in the process of trying to fight your way out (by turning your gun on the mob boss, for example), a stray bullet from your gun strikes and kills the innocent man, even then, you are still liable.

Clayton -

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This is a contradiction in terms. Coercion IS the lack of volition. In this particular model, there is no coercion but the promise of coercion in the future. There is no act committed “under coercion.” If you were “under coercion” you would either be defending yourself from the coercion or be defeated by it. “Fight or flight” are the only choices under real coercion.

There is a difference between a cold-blooded killer and someone who has been compromised by another criminal. That difference is purely subjective, however, and only measurable by your own individual values. Let go of objectivist ethics or forever be lost in non-answerable puzzles like this one.

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Let go of the false dichotomy of objective and subjective and all the puzzles like this one will be gone.

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Fair enough. However this is not my definition of ethics.

Once again, fair enough to you. I believe that morality as such does not exist, there is only that morality which we create based upon VALUE PREFERENCE. With this principal discovered we discern that there is no good nor evil except for that which we value. My actions of murder under coercion may be evil TO YOU under your definition of morality but for me and for others it changes the nature of the act. I do not advocate relativistic ethics, I advocate an objective ethic founded upon the least amount of force possible for all individuals to pursue their goals, however I understand completely that this can in actuality be no higher than any other proposed ethic, however most people, my self included, consider the acts of the seriously coerced to be understandable and therefore I do not consider that coerced action and uncoerced action are the same. In most cases where I was presented with an action I normally consider evil but I was under a state of coercion then I would probably perform the “evil” action.

So basically, explain to me how there even can be an action which is “better” or “worse” and why, because we understand that we are the ones designing our ethical systems, that we should not take pity upon those who are being coerced.

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Nonsense. Volition is the faculty we each possess to “will” or “direct” the body to act. Volition does not cease by virtue of the presence of coercion. Some forms of coercion limit or disable one’s volition - handcuffs limit the ability to move your arms and taser shock disables voluntary muscle control.

I include the threat as well as the use of violence under the term “coercion.” Violence can result in disability or death which may remove volition, but so long as an individual is alive and possesses most of his sensorimotor capacity, he has volition. Volition is the capacity for “willing”.

Of course.

I have never held objectivist ethics nor will I ever do so. Rand was a pretty sloppy thinker, IMO.

Clayton -

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wilderness: Can you elaborate?

I agree with this. I guess my problem is that I don’t think soldier’s acts should be given the status of “committed while under coercion,” since the contract stipulating the consequences of disobedience was signed willingly by the soldier. So it’s not like the “poor soldier” is instantly faced with the choice of committing crime for others or being charged as a criminal. By signing the contract the soldier has explicitly agreed to obey. That’s why a lot of these soldiers commit atrocities: they think that since they signed up willingly, it would be immoral for them to disobey orders (violate the contract). So, to me, they were never really under the threat of coercion, and have remained in full control of their volition.

It’s the pervasive statist meme of OBEY AUTHORITY that really facilitates these atrocities, not the threat of charges from superiors. Either way, while it may be hard to imagine that so many people seem to have the intrinsic ability to kill indiscriminately, like soldiers, it doesn’t change the fact that every individual is innocent until they commit crime. The state just happens to be excellent at funnelling these types of people into their organizations, and then it’s a “big surprise” that soldiers will kill indiscriminately upon orders. Criminals aren’t “more” or “less” of a criminal because they wear clown-suits.

BTW I was thinking of volition as the ability to choose to act in the absense of coercion, which may be the wrong definition so please excuse me.

Anyway isn’t it funny how the very existence of statism creates these paradoxes and conundrums? It is my subjectively held conclusion that matters of this sort would fall into place a lot easier in a stateless society (especially since most of these problems would then be absent).

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I don’t know what you mean by objective and subjective. You possibly traverse the hang-ups by using such terms, but to attempt to make a clear delineation isn’t always possible as those terms act in tandem.

This is due to human action being subjective preferences made objective by the act itself.

A is preferred to B known by the act of A instead of the act of B happening in the moment. This is how praxeology is a science.

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And I take it this is also how ethics is not a science? Or am I way off?

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Depends on what you mean by ethics.

Descriptively how people conduct themselves towards each other is a social phenomena that are acts.

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Do you feel the ethics debate is a waste of time? I like what you’re saying… (I bought Human Action recently but haven’t had the chance to read it)

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Depends on what you mean? If I can somehow pull a debate off with a person that wants to run off in a car and crash it into a crowd of people, then I’ll take the debate before I physically restrain them. The next question I ask myself is who is right in this situation? For some reason the nut that wants to run a car into a crowd of people thinks he’s right. I want to stop him and think I’m right. So who’s right? Before we answer this let’s go through the following:

The whole argument on ethics when it turns from purely descriptive (which I was doing in the previous posts) to more normative ethics (which the above example gets into) all boil down to scarcity. Though I still wonder how much of ethics is normative rather than descriptive still. But maybe the normative aspect has to do with the first decision between how scarcity will be resolved: initiated physical aggression or in liberty (absence of initiated physical aggression).

Austrian economics is founded upon economic goods are scarce, ie. the world is finite (thus socialist programs to print nearly infinite amounts of money without theoretical insights into what happens after the boom are not present. The world is not scarce and everybody can share in the wealth, etc…). But due to scarcity conflicts may arise. In a free market (free from coercion, meaning the robber hasn’t shown up yet in this possible world/example) scarcity is resolved with buying and selling. The consumer and producers barter, haggle, and negotiate, eg. consumer goes to store-A and buys the cheaper priced TV rather than the same TV brand at a higher price at store-B. Yet what happens when the robber shows up? There are descriptively preferences involved still. The TV store owner doesn’t want his TV stolen. The robber prefers to steal it. Two preferences conflicted over a scarce item, ie. TV.

Who’s preference is right? Logically the TV store owner wins out due to arguable principles that stem from scarcity. This eventual judgment on who’s right or wrong possibly is a preference based on the best logic and knowledge available at this time. Humans are fallible, maybe the knowledge at our disposal is wrong. But all that is consideration to gain foresight into disarming potential conflicts and spreading these ideas throughout society. You know, hopefully the kid Paul down the street grows up to be a good man based on the kind of education society fed him. But these judgments on who is right over the any scarcity, including the TV, these judgments will be made no matter what. Whether it’s foresight through education on what is right or wrong. Or whether it’s the TV store owner fighting it out with the robber. There is a conflict and each prefer the TV and since it is scarce only one person will end up with it in this possible world. Their preferences will struggle in a potential conflict and they will act out their preferences in physical combat with each other. It’s going to happen but maybe enough kid Paul’s of the world will find a better way to deal with scarcity than physical conflict? The struggle over scarcity is inevitable because even libertarians don’t think the world without a gov’t will be a utopia. Criminals and innocents will still be present.

hope that helps. I know it got long. But it was a big question in my opinion.

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I wouldn’t call it errors, but I have a quibble. So when someone is coerced they are coerced into doing something they wouldn’t have done. This in no way implies the person being coerced has your conception of good or evil. Its just as likely I put a gun to someones head and tell them to “donate to charity!” So just because the person “wouldn’t” have done the action without coercion doesn’t mean that they “shouldn’t” have done it.

Free will alone is kind of sticky business, you might like an author named John Searle, you heard of him? Look at his authors@google video on youtube.

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No, that’s a big help. I’ve been yearning for a solid praxeological perspective on the subjective/objective debate. I was an objectivist for about a year before I started having issues with it. I imagine that even though I agree with the above post, I will still argue the subjective side of the argument if I can. But maybe I should avoid the debate altogether and work on becoming more of a human action junkie.

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Excellent!

Have you read Gordon’s Introduction to Economic Reasoning? He explains preferences in accord with Carl Menger’s great works on theory of marginal utility and Mises human action. It was a really good read in my opinion. It was short and sweet but packed with a good insightful foundation.

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I have to admit that I’ve had that pdf downloaded for over a year and haven’t read it yet. :X