Topics Freedom

Question If a man held a gun to your head and told you to go downstairs, would you have a choice?

Accepted:
November 27, 2005

Comments

Yes, you would have a choice. You could choose to call his bluff by refusing to go downstairs and risk being shot, or you could obey (and still risk being shot).

It's a choice, however, that's made under duress; and it's a choice that's coerced (i.e., where a threat of force or pain or deprivation is brought to bear on the choice by some responsible human agency).

Duress makes it difficult if not impossible to deliberate in a clear, rational, and considered way.

Coercion raises the stakes to such a point that normal and otherwise relevant alternatives become unreasonable.

Because the choice is both coerced and made under duress, one's moral culpability for the choice is generally mitigated and generally no legal contracts made through the choice are considered binding. True, people often say under such circumstances that one "has no choice." This is often an imprecise way of saying something like: "one could not reasonably have chosen otherwise," or "one could not have made an uncoerced and fully deliberate choice in those circumstances."

Question If a man held a gun to your head and told you to go downstairs, would you have a choice? Accepted:November 27, 2005

Question If a man held a gun to your head and told you to go downstairs, would you have a choice?

Accepted:
November 27, 2005