A Problem With Autonomy
- Thread starter ChineseDrone
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ChineseDrone
Totally depraved
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On a fundamental level I'm not sure you can separate the ideas of giving people sensory data through speech and giving people sensory data through air chemicals. To be more specific, releasing a chemical pheromone into the air is giving them information--it's sensory information that causes their brain to do X, Y, and Z, which may make them shoot their friend. Likewise, if you write them a letter, you're giving them sensory information that causes their brain to do X, Y, and Z, which makes them shoot their friend. I suppose this is me dipping into the physicalism/agent causation question I was hoping to avoid, but I don't really see how the two is different beyond the fact that we have enough cognitive dissonance to be OK with the latter.
However, more practically, I'm not really sure that this part of your post-
-holds, because if your definition of something being "fully coercive" is that it succeeds, empirically we know that speech is fully capable of successfully making people do things they otherwise would not do in some cases. Like the prospective 6-10 pheromone, speech sometimes does not work (in which case someone is unconvinced and does not act differently) and it sometimes does work (in which case someone is convinced and does act differently). The category of the people who are fully convinced to do exactly what the speaker says are "fully compelled" as you describe, which is why they did it--if you were to replay that exact same particular string of words and inflections, with the exact same body language, in the exact same context, a thousand times, they would not somehow be able to resist in another instance of the interaction
The way you wrote this list seems problematic to me. Number two says that it "controls their brain in such a way that they are compelled to do something they are usually opposed to when you activate it.", those words strongly imply that it works in a coercive way.
3, 4 and 5 have the same effect as 2. 6,7,8,9,10 and 11 all sometimes have the same effect as 2. By writing the list in this way you are assuming that speech and the written word sometimes "control other's brains by compelling them to do something they are usually opposed to". So, you seem to kind of have incorporated your conclusion as an assumption in the list.
However it is very arguable whether speech and the written word actually works like that. Causing someone to act in a certain way does not necessarily mean that you have compelled them to do it.
3, 4 and 5 have the same effect as 2. 6,7,8,9,10 and 11 all sometimes have the same effect as 2. By writing the list in this way you are assuming that speech and the written word sometimes "control other's brains by compelling them to do something they are usually opposed to". So, you seem to kind of have incorporated your conclusion as an assumption in the list.
However it is very arguable whether speech and the written word actually works like that. Causing someone to act in a certain way does not necessarily mean that you have compelled them to do it.
ChineseDrone
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Both persuasive speech and a chemical follow the pattern of "You cause some change to the outside world" --> "The change itself (rather than thinking about the change as happens with simply "factual" speech) to the outside world alters the functioning of the target's mind" --> "The altered functioning of the target's mind makes him act in a fashion that contradicts his previous wishes". I don't really see what the difference is
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cB557
voOOP
One provides information or reasoning, the other alters the chemical balance of their brain so that they can't think properly.
Yes, but it is very arguable that causing such a change in someone's mind don't necessarily mean that you have compelled the target to do anything. It can just mean that the target freely (as in free from coercion) choose to change his behavior due to your advice (or whatever other method you used to influence his mind).
ChineseDrone
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Again, I'm not talking about speech that provides information (although I think there's a strong argument to be made that even that is not really distinct, I don't want to get bogged down in a free will argument), I'm talking about things like charisma, wording, pathos, etc. that are aspects of persuasive speech that people don't usually respond to logically but instinctually (which is to say, with no real control over the process)
Choices people make generally aren't the result of a purely logical process, but that does not necessarily mean that they are compelled to make them, not even in cases where logical reasoning plays no significant part.
Demanding that the person has control over the entire process in order for it to not be compelled is rather problematic. Rather it might be more appropriate to say that they are the process of their thoughts, so there would be a recursion problem with such self-control.
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cB557
voOOP
Even if instincts and biases aren't logical, they aren't something you don't have any control over. A well crafted argument for a transparently terribly position is still unlikely to convince someone. If you drugged them instead, it wouldn't really matter how terrible your position was, they're gonna comply with you.
vicky_molokh
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This comment just attracts attention to the point that 'compel' is largely defined tautologically ("speech is not a compel and anything that is a compel is more than speech"), with no clear procedure to draw the line unless someone already internalized the arbitrary division. It's a 'vegetable' problem.
I am not seeing any of the scenarios as coercive in anyway. These are all various scales of mind control and puppeteering.
Coercion needs the victim to make a decision and not having a decision being made for them. The last part I feel is the most important thing. In all the scenarios, the decision is being made for the victim without the victim's input.
It is like saying fraud and blackmail are the same thing.
Coercion needs the victim to make a decision and not having a decision being made for them. The last part I feel is the most important thing. In all the scenarios, the decision is being made for the victim without the victim's input.
It is like saying fraud and blackmail are the same thing.
Sure, there is no single obvious way to draw the line between what is compelling someone and what is non-coercive influence.
However, there is a range of more reasonable ways to draw that line and declaring such speech to be coercive would be going quite far. Defining it in that way is liable to turn it into a rather useless concept where almost everything qualifies and it would necessitate the need to use another word for the kinds of influence which are considered impermissible in most cases.