[From Bruce Nevin (980702.1055 EDT)]
Bill Powers (980701.2036 MDT) --
How about: Coercion is using physical force or the threat of it to make
another person appear to behave in a certain manner.No problem. It neatly captures both senses of "behave." It also captures
how the victim may satisfy the appearance of compliance, the letter vs. the
spirit of the law.Ah, an agreement.
The fact that the subordinate control system's actions would otherwise be
different follows from PCT.
We probably should have stopped there, and let the rest go by. Perhaps
that's the thing to do now, until we can talk face to face in Vancouver.
Still, a misunderstanding beckons ...
Here, you are arguing in support of what I have been saying. The victim is
still controlling a perception--behaving--only without being able to reduce
error because of currently overwhelming disturbances. THEREFORE the coercer
is NOT controlling the victim's behavior. The coercer is controlling the
position of the victim's hand, much as he might control the position of a
book or a shoe.So, by your reasoning, there is no relevance in the fact that the victim
considers the position of his hand the variable he is trying to control. As
soon as the coercer takes control of it, the coercee is no longer
controlling it. So there is no conflict, and no coercion (that is, the
coercer is NOT making the coercee do something against his will, but is
instead doing it FOR the coercee).
I have a hard time making sense of that.
No wonder. But look back at the second sentence of mine that you quoted. I
said the victim is still controlling that perception. That's the behavior
that the coercer can't control.
One last bit led me to something about the relation of coercion and
punishment:
I'm trying to describe a situation in which you find
that there is only one way you CAN behave, with any attempt to behave
otherwise meeting with insuperable counterforces. Once you have experienced
those counterforces, nobody needs to threaten you with them. You know
they're there. You may continue to try to overcome them, or give up. But
either way, you've been coerced.
The coercer becomes for the victim then as though an inanimate source of
insuperable disturbance, an obstruction in the environment. Attempting to
move the hand in a different way is like attempting to move it through a
wall or a desktop.
But a wall or a desktop is inanimate. The victim perceives that a control
system is responsible for the insuperable counterforces. The control
systems that the victim remembers had variable motivations, behavioral
outputs, and attention. The victim's reference perceptions for interactions
with other control systems reflect this variability. The victim may
periodically test the limits imposed by the coercer. Unless infractions are
punished, which is an additional matter. When a threat is involved, a
different situation from that which you describe, the threat is usually of
punishment.
Punishment is not necessary for coercion to work (though to the victim some
forms of coercion may be punishment enough). Coercion is necessary for
punishment to work.
Punishment I take to be infliction of pain (with some moralistic purpose,
but set that aside, a bit tangled). Punishment relies on coercion. The
victim must be coerced to remain in the appropriate state to receive it for
the duration of its administration. A child sent to bed without supper must
be kept from escaping to eat elsewhere.
Punishment is always used with a negative injunction--"Don't do that!" It
couldn't be used in the affirmative. It's not hard to see why. It
presumably forces reorganization. The results are unpredictable, but the
expectation of the punisher is that the results will be different from what
led to the punishment. Coercion may be either affirmative or negative,
either "Do this!" or "Don't do that!"
"Or the threat" is the part of your definition where I still demur a bit,
but I think maybe I can clear that up now.
The at-one-remove thing that you call coercion and I call threat depends
upon a threat of punishment. That's the worker being cautious about goofing
off (as long as he "appears to behave in a certain manner" he's OK) under
threat of losing his job, which to him is a painful prospect. That's the
claim (hotly denied) about RTP teachers.
The compliance that you describe above, in which "there is only one way you
CAN behave, with any attempt to behave otherwise meeting with insuperable
counterforces," is in principle no different from navigating around
physical obstacles in the environment, though the fact that another control
system is the author of the insuperable counterforces does open up other
possibilities for the victim, e.g. the perception that the coercer should
do differently, might become negligent, might be persuaded, should be
punished by one's big brother, etc. I agree with you that compliance in
this case is not due to threat. Whatever it is that underlies the "giving
up" that was denominated the "universal error curve" could be all that is
going on here. The counterforces are unsuperable, and the victim stops
trying to resist them.
Hmm. "Give me the strength to control the perceptions that can be
controlled, the courage to relinquish control of those that can't and try
something else, and the wisdom to know the difference." Nah. Doesn't have
the ring of old John Chrysostom's original. It'll never catch on.