[From Bill Powers (980701.0826 MDT)]
Bruce Nevin (980630. EDT)--
I said:
If someone doesn't want to
call control of another person's behavior through the use or threat of
physical force "coercion," I confess I can't understand why. But if we can
agree on the "control of behavior" definition, I suppose we can be sure
we're referring to the same thing and forget about saying "coercion."
You said:
This might be someone's objection. It's put backward for me. I don't mind
calling the interaction we're talking about "coercion." I object to
describing coercion as control of another person's behavior. As soon as the
coercer controls it, it is thereby no longer the victim's behavior.
Coercion prevents the victim's behavior just as surely as the cage prevents
the bird's flying behavior.
The problem here is that you aren't specifying what YOU mean by behavior.
This is a problem in several ways. To start with the first:
As Rick pointed out, most people who speak of behavior fail to
differentiate between controlled perceptions (qi) and the actions by which
they do the controlling (qo). You, apparently, think you are talking about
actions, output, when you use the word behavior, but I'll bet that at least
half of the time you're actually talking about a controlled perception but
haven't paused to realize it.
For example, you speak of a bird's "flying behavior." Flying, surely, is a
perceived consequence of the bird's motor actions, not an output of its
nervous system or muscles. Muscles produce forces, not flyings. I would
guess that birds don't really perceive what we perceive as flying; our
definition of the term tends to refer to a side or bottom view of the
activity. For a bird, flying is the way the world drops away and gets
smaller, and the way certain parts of it can be made to approach in just
the right way to alight upon. In other words, it's a set of controlled
perceptions.
You can say the same thing about walking. We perceive the consequences of
the patterned tensing of our muscles, and call those perceived consequences
"walking." But we don't often pay attention to the muscle tensions which
are the actual outputs involved in walking. When you speak about the
behavior of walking, you're actually referring to a set of controlled
perceptions, inputs not outputs. But like all of us, you think of this
perceptual consequence of the motor activities as what you are actually
"doing."
Why do you have to say that coercion is the control of another's behavior?
Putting it that way introduces a sense of recursion that is not intended.
(Coercion is behavior and behavior is the control of perceptual input.
Coercion is control of perception of another's control of perception of
...) Here are some alternative definitions:
The problem here lies in whether you define behavior according to who is in
control of it, or according to variables defining the physical situation.
Consider the behavior of moving your hand to various positions. The x,y,z
coordinates of your hand are the vector variable being controlled, and the
way they are seen to vary with time is the "behavior" in question. Whether
you control the position of your hand or I control it, the same variable,
the behavior of your hand, is being controlled. I hope that you can see how
naturally "the behavior of your hand" becomes the controlled variable no
matter who is controlling it. It is "your" behavior because it is "your" hand.
Your argument is that either you or I must control the position of the hand
(regardless of whose it is), and that coercion means that only the stronger
of us controls it, while the other fails to control it. But (and this is
the other main problem) this view fails to recognize that if you are the
coercer, I am still _trying_ to control the hand. I am still experiencing
error, still producing output forces, and still perceiving the position of
the hand and comparing it with a desired position. In fact, I am still
doing everything that a control system does -- except managing to keep my
error small. As far as I am concerned, I am still engaged in the process I
call controlling, even though right now it's not working very well. I'm
doing it as well as I can, in the circumstances.
This is very different from the situation in which you are controlling the
position of my hand (as perceived) and I am not even trying to control it.
If I'm not trying to control it, I have no reference level for a desired
position of my hand; there is no (position) error no matter what position I
perceive it to be in; I am producing no output tending to alter its
position. The behavior of the hand is very nearly the same as when I am
trying to control it (since you are so much stronger), but now it's really
true that only one control system exists: yours.
It makes a difference whether my control system exists and is trying
unsuccessfully to correct its error, or does not exist (or is turned off)
so that only one control system is active.
Instead of thinking of a control system as something that accomplishes a
certain result, think of it as a physical device which is always trying to
accomplish that result as long as it is turned on, with varying success
depending on how strong environmental disturbances are at the moment. You
don't judge whether a control system exists by seeing whether the error is
zero; you judge by whether the required piecewise relationships among
components and variables exist: perception, reference level, error signal,
output function, etc..
Coercion is control of the coercer's perceptions by means that prevent the
victim from controlling successfully.
Coercion is behavior that prevents another's.
Coercion is conflict in which one side always gets its way by overpowering
the other.
I think these are all acceptable, but incomplete, descriptions of coercion.
The Wise Men and the Elephant, again.
How about: Coercion is using physical force or the threat of it to make
another person appear to behave in a certain manner.
The "appear to" takes into account your observation that the coercer is
really in control of the behavioral variable in question (whether the
victim's qi or the victim's qo). Really successful coercion, however, does
not involve operating the victim's arms and legs like a marionette. It
involves the use of force to the point where the mere threat of further use
is enough to produce compliance, so to an onlooker who does not know the
history of this relationship, it appears that the victim is producing the
behavior in question without external influence.
So the victim can truly say, "Yes, I am the one controlling this behavior
that you see, but no, I am not in control of whether I produce this
behavior or not. I am controlling in this manner only because whenever I do
not, I become subject to overwhelming physical force from someone more
powerful than I am."
I think that the disadvantage of using coercion to produce good behavior in
someone else is clearly laid out in the preceding statement. Coercion
produces good behavior only as long as the victim believes there is the
credible threat of overwhelming physical force. In practical terms, this
means that it is quite probable that the good behavior will last only as
long as the behavior is known by the victim to be under observation by the
coercer. The motive for the good behavior is not the maintenance of
principles or system concepts that the victim perceives, accepts, and
actively supports, but is only the avoidance of being on the receiving end
of overwhelming physical force.
Those who use physical force for benign ends do so in the belief that if
the victim can be made to exhibit certain acceptable behaviors, these
behaviors will tend to become "stamped in" so they will persist once the
victim is set free from the coercive situation. Good behavior will become
"habitual." It will "displace" bad behavior. If you simulate respect long
enough, "real respect" will follow. Such views add up to some sort of vague
model of how behavior works.
The flaw in this vague model is that the coercer has no practical way to
find out if it's valid. The coercer sees good behavior whenever the coercer
(or a surrogate) is looking -- and no information when he or she or a
surrogate is not looking. In the case of children, any adult becomes a
surrogate of the coercer, so when any adult is observing, children make
sure they are "on their best behavior" (as they understand the adults to
perceive it). The children exert, as Tom Bourbon has often pointed out,
"counter-control." By controlling the perceptions they allow the adults to
have of them, the children control the adults' actions -- mainly by
convincing the adults that no corrective action is needed.
This is why being an informer is considered by children to be such a
monstrous social sin. The informer, by telling the coercers what is really
going on, threatens to destroy the children's counter-control.
The adult who uses benign coercion wants to instill good standards and
values into the child-coercee, so that later in life the child will have a
sound higher-order basis for governing moral and other social behavior. But
coercion begets resistance, and by resisting, children learn how to resist,
not how to comply. It teaches counter-control; here, the art of giving the
coercer the illusion of success while maintaining independence from the
coercer at higher levels of perception and control. Rather than "stamping
in" the good behavior, coercion is most likely to teach the victim how to
_simulate_ good behavior when required, without acquiring any higher-order
reasons for independently choosing good behavior.
This is one of my primary beefs with certain religions. The basis for
teaching good behavior in many of them is nothing more edifying than the
promise of endless ecstasy for being good, and the threat of endless agony
for being bad. There is nothing taught about why being good is better than
being bad. In fact, I occasionally test religiously-inclined acquaintances
by asking them why one shouldn't murder. If the only answer is "Because
it's a sin to murder and God will punish you if you do it," it's clear that
this person hasn't built up any independent understanding or goals on this
subject at the level of principles or system concepts.
Still on that subject, the proposal that God is omniscient is necessary if
the threat of pain or the promise of pleasure is to be a credible means of
coercing good behavior. Secular pleasure and pain -- reward and punishment
by human beings -- are usable as means of producing the appearance of good
behavior only as long as the controller can observe the controllee. So for
many people, the principle involved in dealing with humans in authority is
"What they don't know won't hurt them" or "The only crime is getting
caught." You can do anything you like as long as the police or other
authorities don't know about it.
This principle would, of course, make religious moral admonitions
ineffective, because if you believe that God can see only what you choose
to reveal of your thoughts and activities, you can violate any commandment
you please as long as you keep it a secret. The obvious counter to this
escape clause is the one actually used by theologians: to say "Ah, yes, but
God in His mercy knows the hidden as well as the plain, your thoughts as
well as your actions, and your behavior just as well as, and at the same
time as, everyone else's, without cease or pause." In other words, there is
never a time when God is not observing your behavior and your _reasons_ for
behaving, so you can never be free of this surveillance and escape the
implied consequences of wrong-doing or even wrong-thinking. You have to
keep up the good behavior under all circumstances, because you are always
under observation.
I don't think that most people realize the true horror of this supposed
inescapable 24-hour surveillance. Even believers do sin from time to time,
or think about sinning, which shows me that they don't truly understand the
implications. You can't say "I'm not really sinning" or "I don't really
mean it" or "This one doesn't count," because God knows the truth, you
can't conceal it. Even to desire to sin is to reveal your true motives, and
God will never forget them. This places you totally at God's mercy.
I think I came to realize the true implications of what I was being taught
in this regard when I was eleven or twelve. By that time I had sinned
enough to know that it didn't really matter what I did for the rest of my
life: I was doomed to roast or boil in hell forever. I was like the
prisoner in jail for murder without hope of parole: what more can they do
to me if I murder again?
Then I caught on to the "forgiveness" part of the story. If I truly
repented and resolved to sin no more, my past sins would be forgiven and I
could start over, clean. Wow! How could any sinner pass up a deal like
that? I was on the verge of thinking, "Oh, yes, Lord, sign me up, just tell
me what to do."
Well, not really on the verge. I was just close enough to realize what I
would probably do if I fell for that scam (as I later came to think of it).
I completely understood why other people went for the deal -- not
intellectually, since I wasn't capable of much adult reasoning yet, but by
feeling what it would be like, in imagination, to shed all that guilt. It
would be, as they say, like being born again. If you feel that you've
totally spoiled your first chance, how could you resist being handed a
second chance?
Then it hit me. The only reason I felt so guilty was that I was afraid of
God. But it was God who set all this up in the first place, who scared me
with hell (I was much less impressed with the joys of standing around
telling God how great he was, that he hadn't lost a thing, and other such
flattery). And who said that any of this was true, anyway? Mr. Hyslop, and
others in the church, and (with some embarrassment) even my parents, but
nobody who impressed me as having any special pipeline to the truth. Sure,
if there is a God, he knows that I'm thinking all this, but he can't doom
me any more than I'm already doomed, so who cares? Strike me down, I dare
you. But no, none of that even makes sense if there's nobody here but me
who knows what's going on inside me.
And so I turned down the deal and quit being quilty, and quit worrying
about heaven and hell. I got born again anyway! I found I was still sorry
for some of my sins and still wanted to stop the ones I really didn't like,
but I also realized that I wanted to know _why_ it was a sin, and _how_ I
could figure out another way to be. I began to get a glimmer of the truth:
that we have to figure out our own reasons and how to make sense of them.
And finally, the point. There was nobody, NOBODY in my school or church who
had any idea of what I was trying to understand (or so I believed). Morals
were something that we teach and force young people to learn; they're not
something you reason about, as if you were as smart as God, or as if more
than one answer were possible. You don't even talk about morals in school;
that's what the young-people's church activities are for. That's what
Sunday is for. That's religion. It wasn't until I went to college that I
learned different, in Paul Arthur Schilpp's course on Ethics.
I know that my personal history isn't very interesting to others, and will
shock or sadden some (poor Bill is doomed, just as he once feared). But
maybe it will explain why I have such a dim view of the idea that coercing
good behavior is a practical way of instilling good behavior in the young.
I don't believe in the theory behind it, such as it is, and I don't believe
that coercers are in any position to know the true effects of their
hopefully benign efforts. To coerce children to be good, it seems to me, is
almost to guarantee that they will conceal their true desires and secret
actions from you, while doing their artful best to make you think they are
just what you hope they are. If they actually were what so many of them
want to convince the adults that they are, this world would be a
drastically different place as soon as they grew up and took charge.
Best,
Bill P.