Can People Be Forced To Do Something?

[Pedersen]

Here's one that I'm sure will ruffle more than a few feathers, especially with my answer.

It is impossible to force someone to do something. Furthermore, it is impossible to stop an unrestrained person from doing something they want to do.

Those two statements touch on a great many issues that we face, and it is important that we acknowledge their validity. Right now, I'm betting there's a few of you who are ready to roast me on an open fire, so allow me to prove my point.

All of us have done things we did not want to do. Most of us have convinced ourselves that we were forced into doing those things. The reality is different, though. We were not forced to do something. Instead, we had a choice of doing something we did not want to do, or dealing with something else we wanted even less.

I say "dealing with something we wanted even less" as opposed to "doing something we wanted to do even less" for a reason. The simplest example would be some of the tasks we do for work that we hate. However, we want to be jobless even less, so we do them. We choose to do the things we don't like because we like the consequences even less.

The second item, the inability to stop someone, is also true. You can see this every day if you drive. Look at the number of people speeding. Heck, you probably don't have to look further than your own speedometer. You don't want to go as slow as the speed limit says, so you go faster. The only times you vigorously obey the speed limit are times you want to, or are being stopped by a police officer.

This happens all the time. This has an impact in how effective laws are. For example, in the UK, the gun bans are viewed as effective, while people believe in the US they would be mostly ineffective. This comes from one of two sources:

1. People in the UK generally have less desire to carry firearms.
2. People in the US generally fear the consequences of violating the law less.

It might well be both of these items, or entirely one or the other. But the end result is the same: In the US, people will continue to carry guns because their desire to carry guns outweighs their fear of the consequences, while the opposite is true of the UK and other places.

And that's just one example. Pretty much every single social issue will be analyzed differently by realizing these two absolute truths about people.

Thoughts?

Edit To Add:
After speaking with some people around me, I've come up with a better way to describe what I'm trying to say.

I am, more or less, separating actions from the choices that precede them. You cannot make the choice for somebody else. You can only give them reasons to make the choice you want them to make.

As such, this is why I say you cannot force someone to do something. They must choose to do it. And if they do not choose to do it, you must apply other varieties of pressure to get them to agree to the choice you want them to make.

Maybe that will explain what I mean better?

Second Edit
Thanks to Evandril, who found a quote from Robert Heinlein who expresses what I am trying to say far more eloquently than I have.

Man can be chained, but he cannot be domesticated. — Robert A. Heinlein

[Flyndaran]

With time and effort anyone can be forced to do anything. Believing otherwise means the speaker just had a nice life with few bumps, disorders, or torments.

I am a rationalist atheist. I don't believe in souls, or magic. Willpower requires a force outside of biology and therefore is not something I entertain as an idea.

I have no animosity toward the religious. I just don't like religious ideas getting spurted into rational discussions.

[Pedersen]

With time and effort anyone can be forced to do anything. Believing otherwise means the speaker just had a nice life with few bumps, disorders, or torments.

Actually, no. All that can be done is to change how much someone wants to do something. You can change external factors that matter to the person. But you cannot force the person to do something.

Look at any situation you care to devise which shows that someone was "forced" to do something. What happened was some outside factor was brought into play that made the "forced" action into the desirable action.

Have someone who's pain intolerant, and you want them to do something they don't want to do? Start inflicting pain. The person will find themselves facing pain they do not want. And all they have to do is do something else they do not want. Once the level of "do not want to experience pain" outstrips "do not want to do x", they will do "x". Afterward, they will say they were forced to do it.

In reality, external factors caused them to change their desires to match the desires of their tormentor.

By the way, nice slam on the quality of my life. And even more impressive way to ignore what I was saying. Maybe this post will clarify it for you.

[linguist]

It is impossible to force someone to do something. Furthermore, it is impossible to stop an unrestrained person from doing something they want to do.

Thoughts?

it seems to me that these two statements are contradictory. if it is impossible to stop someone from doing something they want to do, and they want to force you into doing something, then it is possible to force someone to do something. conversely, if it is impossible to force someone to do something, and someone wants to force you into doing something, then it is possible to stop someone from doing something they want to do.

[crazylegs]

Yes, they can.

I have a job where I have certain enforcement powers, yet I cannot use force to use them (yer, work that one out...). I regularly use my enforcement powers to make people do things that they don't want to do, they destroy their own (illegaly held) property, they stop their vehicles, they stop their pedal cycles. They do not want to do any of these things but they do them none the less.

[Pedersen]

it seems to me that these two statements are contradictory.

In a strict logical proof, they could be considered contradictory. However, they are not contradictory. Reality is what gets in the way of logic here.

For instance, if somebody wants to fly by flapping their arms, gravity will stop them from succeeding.

If someone wants you to do something, they are unable to force you into doing so. They can effectively coerce you by reducing your choices to either doing it or suffering some fate worse than the fate you would get from not doing it. However, you must still do it.

I welcome somebody finding a situation which disproves what I have said, I really do. But I have been unable to find any situation in which somebody is actually forced, not just effectively forced.

The difference between the two is small, a bit on the subtle side, but an important difference.

Effectively forced is the condition where external factors were changed, making the undesirable action sufficiently desirable.

Actually forced is the condition where no external factors were changed, but the undesirable action was still done.

The problem is that I can't come up with a case of actually forced. So, let's look at an extreme case of effectively forced. A mother of twins is given a button. Pressing that button will kill one of the twins instantly and painlessly. She will be unable to predict which one. However, if she does not press that button, the twins will live.

Naturally, she chooses not to press the button. Now, add in an external factor: A timer is started. If she fails to press that button, both twins will die, though still painlessly. Some mothers would be able to let that happen, some would not.

For those that would, we change the conditions again: Failure to press the button means that the twins will be dissolved in acid while they're awake, and she will be restrained in a chair, watching and listening to it happen. Few mothers could tolerate that. Any given mother would probably press the button, rather than watch both of them die so gruesome a death.

The mother was effectively forced, but she was not actually forced. She still chose to press the button. The most that could be forced on her was physical restraint.

Even if someone else had held her finger down and pressed the button using her finger, she was not actually forced. Someone else did the action, not her.

I hope I'm making the difference clear, but I don't think I am.

[Pedersen]

I have a feeling that your answer might change after reading my post right before this, but I'll reply anyway.

I regularly use my enforcement powers to make people do things that they don't want to do

How do you force them? Very likely, you change some external factor that causes them to be willing to do these things.

For instance, they destroy their own illegally held property? One such scenario would be "Either I destroy this property, or I get caught holding it and I go to prison." Two very undesirable outcomes, but going to prison is less desirable. Therefore, they choose to destroy the property.

Another scenario, when they get pulled over: The options are either pull over, or get a bunch more cops on my ass and get busted for evading arrest and go to jail (or worse, since if I evade long enough and hard enough, firearms could become involved). Since going to jail is far worse than getting a speeding ticket, they pull over and get the ticket.

All of these are cases where somebody is effectively forced. But they have not been actually forced.

[Flyndaran]

It seems like this discussion quickly changed into a semantic one.

In my opinion, even for those believing in willpower, it seems horrifically arrogant to think that anyone is rock hard incapable of being forced to do or not do something.

I am stricly addressing the concept here when I say that IT seems like a juvenile and human frailities ignorant idea.

[Rapscallion]

Forcing? I think it's possible. Depends on the person.

People do things for three reasons.

1 - fear. For example, your boss has just yelled blue murder at you over something minor, but at the heart of that is his fear that a mystery shop may uncover something bad on his record, and he fears his boss, who fears his boss, who fears the CEO, who fears the shareholders... Fear of not being able to pay the rent/mortgage comes into play as well. All those good things.

2 - because they want to. Someone can help out for charitable reasons, they'll do something. I run CS.com for the benefit of those in retail - it's a way of giving back after the place kept my sanity in the dark days.

3 - for shits and giggles. That's the fun one! I dabble in it from time to time.

The first one is where you can force someone. There was a scene in ... I think it's one of the Exorcist movies, the one that's more or less a prequel? The priest was in a concentration camp and forced by a nazi officer to decide which of six of a group of twelve should die, or they all would. He had to point to them one by one, knowing that if he didn't then the entire group would be shot.

Yeah, I'd say that there can be sufficient inducement put on someone. Of course, this does depend on the person. It also depends on the situation. Carrying a gun can easily be a life or death issue, whereas a few miles above the speed limit generally makes no odds. Occasionally, driving above the speed limit causes death, but by the same token you can drive below the speed limit and still kill someone.

If the penalties for speeding included death, plus a very effective system for tracking offenders, you can be sure that people would get limiters in their cars, for example.

Rapscallion

[Pedersen]

It seems like this discussion quickly changed into a semantic one.

No, it's not about semantics. Sometimes I argue them, but this is not one of those times.

The difference here is a very major one, and I'm sorry I haven't been able to show it properly. Especially so since this is the heart of the issue in many different types of laws. Perhaps gun control laws can explain it.

How many times have gun control debates devolved into one side saying "See, it works!" and the other side saying "People who are breaking the laws will carry anyway, since they've got nothing to lose" ?

Laws and police officers an attempt at applying force to resolve issues. However, the sole power that they have is not the power of control, but the power of restraint. They cannot prevent somebody doing something illegal. They can only respond to the action and restrain the violator.

If they could actually force people to do things, then no laws would be broken, ever. After all, they would force people to behave in a legal fashion.

All they can do, though, is effectively force people to do things, and that is only in direct response to the threat of "Do this now or I will restrain you, first in handcuffs, and then in prison, for a long time."

Does that help to show the difference?

[Evandril]

One factor that doesn't seem to be coming into play here...Actual physical force. When my kids were growing up, there was at least one time where I had to literally restrain them to keep them in their 'time-out'. They absolutely did NOT want to be sitting at that point in time, but were forced to do so. Failure to address direct physical intervention makes the point seem stronger, and besides that point, it is a valid point...but that is not something that can be dismissed.

[Pedersen]

Failure to address direct physical intervention makes the point seem stronger, and besides that point, it is a valid point...but that is not something that can be dismissed.

Actually, re-read what you've said. Except for restraining someone, all you managed to do was make them want something else more.

Sit in time-out for as long as I tell you, or you will face worse punishment. And in the end, restraint was all that was left to exert control.

Physically restraining someone is not the same thing.

I also address it twice that I remember: Once in the first post, once in the "mother has to either kill a twin or watch both die" post. If someone physically grabs her finger and pushes the button, the claim can be made that she was physically forced to do it. But it is even more accurate to say that someone else used her finger to get it done.

Even with physical coercion, the only thing that is done is to change what someone wants to do.

[Pedersen]

I posted this edit in the beginning of the thread, and am now posting it here, to hopefully help anybody watching this thread get a better understanding of what I'm saying.

---
After speaking with some people around me, I've come up with a better way to describe what I'm trying to say.

I am, more or less, separating actions from the choices that precede them. You cannot make the choice for somebody else. You can only give them reasons to make the choice you want them to make.

As such, this is why I say you cannot force someone to do something. They must choose to do it. And if they do not choose to do it, you must apply other varieties of pressure to get them to agree to the choice you want them to make.

Maybe that will explain what I mean better?

[Evandril]

Actually, re-read what you've said. Except for restraining someone, all you managed to do was make them want something else more.

Sit in time-out for as long as I tell you, or you will face worse punishment. And in the end, restraint was all that was left to exert control.

Physically restraining someone is not the same thing.

I also address it twice that I remember: Once in the first post, once in the "mother has to either kill a twin or watch both die" post. If someone physically grabs her finger and pushes the button, the claim can be made that she was physically forced to do it. But it is even more accurate to say that someone else used her finger to get it done.

Even with physical coercion, the only thing that is done is to change what someone wants to do.

No, they were not willing to do as I wanted...and were forced to do so. Same idea of someone not wanting to kneel in front of someone, and being physically forced to do so. Was it their choice? No. Did they have any other option? No. Wars are a very good example of 'forcing' someone to stop their actions, on a very direct level. You are not trying to convince the person you're shooting at to change their minds (Though I doubt many would complain if they did), you are attempting to render them incapable of action...A rather effective form of 'stopping' them, IMO.

As I've said, without the application of direct force, I do agree with what you are saying...But I don't feel it takes that force into account.

[Pedersen]

Read your examples again, please, and then reconsider what I am trying to get across (and doing so very badly, from what I can tell).

No, they were not willing to do as I wanted...and were forced to do so.

The info you gave above include the phrase "there was at least one time where I had to literally restrain them to keep them in their 'time-out'." You restrained the person, but that is as far as being able to "force" anybody can go.

How about making them clean their rooms? How did you "force" them to do so? Obviously, restraining them in a chair would not work, since that would prevent them from doing the action you wanted them to do. The most you could do was change other conditions until they chose to clean their room. For instance, if you were like my parents, you might very well have said "Either clean your room or you are grounded." That gave me the option of being stuck in the house while I was grounded or doing what they wanted me to do.

They changed something else, and that change made me want to clean my room.

Same idea of someone not wanting to kneel in front of someone, and being physically forced to do so. Was it their choice? No. Did they have any other option? No.

Actually, that is very different. A more accurate description of the event would be "someone not wanting to kneel, so someone else bent his knees for him and held him down." He did not choose to do something. Someone else did it for him.

Wars are a very good example of 'forcing' someone to stop their actions, on a very direct level. You are not trying to convince the person you're shooting at to change their minds (Though I doubt many would complain if they did), you are attempting to render them incapable of action...A rather effective form of 'stopping' them, IMO.

You are correct. The point of such wars is to restrain the enemy from being capable of doing something, not changing their minds. Which is not the same as forcing them to do something, but rather is rendering them incapable of doing something. Very different.

As I've said, without the application of direct force, I do agree with what you are saying...But I don't feel it takes that force into account.

Very much, I do.

Something else people need to take into consideration in this is their own prejudices. One thing that many many people have a strong aversion to is a lack of control. They need to feel in control of their own lives, at the least. Many people also need to believe that others can be compelled to behave in a manner that they approve of.

But the reality is that, short of physical restraint, it is not possible to force this behavior. It is only possible to change what someone wants until they finally agree that they want what you say they want.

You can grab their hands and use their hands to pick something up. But in that case, you are picking it up. It's no different than using one of those gripper tools.

You can bend their knees and hold them down, forcing them to kneel. But you are bending their knees, not them.

I know it seems like an esoteric, almost purely semantic difference, but it's a huge difference when that knowledge is applied to other debates. Look at other debates you've had with other people, and evaluate what was said with that "semantic" difference. You're very likely to see what the other person said in a very different light.

For me, the hardest part here is that I know I've got a valid point, but I know I'm not expressing it well. I am trying, though.

[Lace Neil Singer]

I know I'm opening a can of worms here, but do you include rape in your post as not being forced? If a person is holding another person down and subjecting them to sex against their will, that is force. Not every victim submits to save themselves hurt, some are fighting all the way.

[Evandril]

Few ways a favorite author said similar ;)

I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. — Robert A. Heinlein

Man can be chained, but he cannot be domesticated. — Robert A. Heinlein

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue - and thoroughly immoral - doctrine 'that violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedom - Robert A. Heinlein

[Pedersen]

I know I'm opening a can of worms here, but do you include rape in your post as not being forced? If a person is holding another person down and subjecting them to sex against their will, that is force. Not every victim submits to save themselves hurt, some are fighting all the way.

Answering this one sucks. I either lie, or find myself being screamed at a lot after this. Guess I'd best get used to the screaming.

Someone who is raped is having something done to them. It falls into the second category: Restraint. The victim is being restrained. Things happen while they are being restrained. These things are things they do not consent to. These things are things they do not accept.

The victim is not being forced to do something. The victim is being forced to accept something. There is a very large difference between the two.

Few ways a favorite author said similar ;)

Thank you. Heinlein does express it much better than I did. Especially in this quote:

Man can be chained, but he cannot be domesticated. — Robert A. Heinlein

That seems to be a perfect summation of what I was trying to say, and trying to bring to people's attention. In fact, I'm going to put that into the first post right now.

[Sylvia727]

Pedersen, I understood and agreed with what you were trying to say in your very first post. A person's body can be forced, but their mind cannot. We can touch, and change, the body directly. We can only touch the mind indirectly, so any method for changing someone's mind can be indirect. To change someone's mind for them we would need to get inside of their skullspace, which would require telepathy, or technology which we can't even grasp today. We know that there are points of torture (or pressure, or stress, or coersion) at which almost all people will choose to change their minds rather than deal with the consequences of remaining the same. Cops do it all the time-- good cop, bad cop is a form of mental manipulation, but nevertheless the suspect chooses to believe, chooses to confess rather than deal with the psychological pressure. They always have free will to choose an option and the consequences of that option.

This comes up in parenting often. A parent cannot force their child to behave well. They can only offer incentives and deterrents to reinforce proper behavior. The child always has the willpower to choose whether they will continue to misbehave, and thus be punished, or whether they will cooperate and be rewarded. "I'm not making you do anything. You can choose to disobey me and be punished, or you can choose to obey me and not be punished," was a lecture I heard a lot growing up.

There's nothing religious about this theory. Psychological, yes, sociological, yes, philosophical, maybe. But there's nothing that requires a leap of faith to understand.

[Seshat]

Thank you for clarifying the physical-violence issue. Yes, a person can be forced into a room, forced into restraints, forced to endure rape or other torments: but that's not the meaning of the word 'forced' that you mean.

You seem to be talking about 'forced to choose'.

And in some ways, I agree with the summation. A person cannot be forced to make any particular choice. But a person's choices can be narrowed, until their only choices are bad choices.
I think there have to be situations where their choices are reduced to one option, but I can't think of such a situation offhand; excluding physical coercion.


However: there is a situation where a person is unable to make choices they might otherwise have made. Psychiatric illness (or induced psychiatric illness, such as being given psychoactive drugs).

The brain of a person with a psychiatric illness (natural or induced) distorts both their perception and their cognitive process.

An obsessive patient may well know that his hand-washing is overdone, and the part of their mind which is themselves may want to stop. But the part of their mind/brain which is currently in control of the actions is obsessing and insists on the hand-washing.

I may be explaining this badly. But I have lived with a person with mental illness for many years now, and have experienced mild mental illness myself. I perceive a clear difference between the person and the person-brain-body combination. And the combination can do things even when the person-inside is screaming to the rest of their 'self' to stop.

[Slytovhand]

Instead, we had a choice of doing something we did not want to do, or dealing with something else we wanted even less.Poppycock!!!

And you should be ashamed of yourself...

We've already spent about 15 pages 'proving' that we didn't even have a choice in the first place (see your Free Will thread :D )

Ok, giving you less crap now... :)

Those little quotes have come from the existentialist movement, one of the most famous being Sartre, who did some line about you can make him a prisoner, but he's still free to choose what sort of prisoner he chooses to be.

I totally agree with your thoughts on this, to the point that it often pisses me off when ppl use the "I don't have any choice" crap. There is always a choice.. you may not like it, you may not like consequences, you might just be afraid of them or of change in general, but there is always a choice. You don't like your home life - move. "Can't"? Well, if your house burnt down, what would you do then... suddenly, your options have just changed - what's the real difference??

Everything is an option (although, our lack of free will obviously denies that :p)

There was a philosopher (I'm thinking Kant, but not sure) who came up with the idea of Psychological Imperatives and (?) Ethical Imperative (IIRC). The first, we can only do what we consider what is in our own best interests (for whatever that may be defined as), the latter that we will usually do what is in our own best interests. I'm one for the former. We don't have a choice in the matter - and in the end, it's the battle of consequences.

But Seshat has beaten me to a thought-line... drugs. They change our perspectives, and under their influence, we would do things that without them we may not. Where does that fit in??

[Pedersen]

However: there is a situation where a person is unable to make choices they might otherwise have made. Psychiatric illness (or induced psychiatric illness, such as being given psychoactive drugs).

True, using the right combination of drugs it is possible to alter a person's decision making process. However, I'm not convinced that it is possible to control the alteration. In other words, you might manage to change the process, but you are not able to control the outcome reliably.

Poppycock!!!

And you should be ashamed of yourself...

We've already spent about 15 pages 'proving' that we didn't even have a choice in the first place (see your Free Will thread :D )

Ok, giving you less crap now... :)

And I do believe that. I also believe that we have act as if we do have free will. Many people are restrained by only a couple of things, and one of them is the idea of punishment. For those, if they have no free will, there is no restraining them. Hence, the need for us to make believe we do.

[Slytovhand]

True, using the right combination of drugs it is possible to alter a person's decision making process. However, I'm not convinced that it is possible to control the alteration. In other words, you might manage to change the process, but you are not able to control the outcome reliably.

Hypnosis??

[Pedersen]

Everything that I have ever heard about hypnosis states that hypnosis only allows for heightened suggestibility. In other words, you're not able to force the subject to do something he or she would be unwilling to do outside of such a state.

Now, it might be possible through a combination of drugs and hypnosis to achieve a desired goal, but that will be a very difficult effect to achieve and (even then) will be extremely unreliable, especially if the controller is unable to be in direct contact with the controlled.

[Boozy]

Everything that I have ever heard about hypnosis states that hypnosis only allows for heightened suggestibility. In other words, you're not able to force the subject to do something he or she would be unwilling to do outside of such a state.

I have heard that as well, although I don't know if what I've heard is true.

Basically, my understanding of hypnosis is that you wouldn't do anything you wouldn't do in the situation you believe you are in. So if the hypnotist tells you you're robbing a bank, you will picture yourself standing in a bank with a gun in hand... but the non-criminals among us will freak out and wonder how they got into this situation. Only a criminal would choose to play out the hynosis-induced vision by shooting the teller and taking the cash.

[Sylvia727]

I went to a hypnotist's show once. He had five people up on bar stools, and told them that they were driving nice sports cars. Red convertibles with the tops down, going 70 mph on the freeway. They mimed holding a steering wheel and kept their right feet on in front on the gas pedal. "There's a police car, wave to the officer." Four people held up their hands and swiveled their wrists in a proper wave; one guy held up his middle finger. It was the same suggestion to all five of them. They reacted differently based on their personalties.

I've never been hypnotized, and I've only picked up cursory information, so I don't know what it's like. But I've also heard that it only messes with your perceptions, not your ability to choose.

[lordlundar]

I see what you're getting at Pederson. The context you are referring to when you say forced to do something is that you have no control over your actions, as opposed to simply choosing A over B.

My take is that as long as you have control over your mind and your body in some fashion, you are not forced to do anything. It's a simple matter of the consequences of Choice A being more favorable than Choice B.

As far as your second choice, that depends on the determination of the person. If the person's determination to accomplish their decision is infinite, than yes, apart from restraining them (removing their capacity to control their actions) is impossible.