Timo Airaksinen

An Analysis of Coercion

Threats and coercion occur in conflict situations. Sometimes mere force and violence are applied. But people also make offers in order to exercise their power. Coercion is characterized as such rational social interaction and exercise of power that the weaker party is threatened by the stronger party. The weaker party will suffer a loss whatever it does, and the stronger party will gain from such action Two different interpretations of coercion are possible: descriptive and normative. In many cases, both interpretations apply to a given case, as Robert Nozick has shown The problem is that this creates a harmful ambiguity in the sense that one and the same case may involve both an offer and a threat. This is impossible. The weaker party is either threatened or is presented with an offer. It is actually very difficult to distinguish analytically between threats and offers, although morally the difference is all important. This paper presents a theory of how such a distinction can be made and analyzes a number of detailed examples as test cases. It is argued that the victim of coercion has a choice between two disequilibrium situations. Offers are different in this respect. Coercion is compared with exploitation. Some coercion is morally justifiable. This feature is also difficult to understand because coercion is always a prima facie evil strategy. The final result is that in many cases a concept like coercion cannot be applied in any value-free manner. This suggestion has deep methodological consequences for social science. Some social science concepts have value elements in their deep structure.

Trust, Responsibility, Power, and Social Capital

This paper discusses trust as a form of social capital, that is, as a social resource which works as a facilitating condition of successful action coordination and social cooperation. It also discusses responsibility as a special source of trust. Coleman (1988) defines social capital in terms of its function of which, roughly, the following features are required: it is a property of a social structure which helps its individual or collective members’ successful action, that is, the function which is called social capital makes it easier for those actors to reach their goals (Putnam 1995). Fukuyama (1999) says that social capital is ‘an instantiated informal norm that promotes cooperation’. He does not mention social structure as Coleman does, and Coleman does not mention cooperation as Fukuyama does. These two defi- nitions may aim at a common idea, but their details disagree radically. Some social capital theorists talk about trust as a factor which exemplifies social capital, but if we believe in Coleman’s structural definition, it may be dif- ficult to see how the most demanding forms of trust fit in. Fukuyama explicitly allows for trust.

Kant on Hobbes, peace, and obedience

Kants essay ‘On the common saying: “This may be true in theory, but it does not apply in practice”’ contains a chapter ‘On the relationship of theory to practice in political right’ to which he added, in brackets, ‘(Against Hobbes)’. The problem is that Kant leaves his Hobbes-criticism implicit. The main point seems to be the Hobbess citizens are without any rights. We explore the differences and similarities between Kants and Hobbess political views and evaluate the effectiveness of Kants criticism. We pay attention to Nominalism and Platonism, the idea of happiness in social life, the use and role of the Golden Rule (Categorical Imperative) in political thought, the quest for freedom, and the principle of political non-resistance. Especially freedom of speech is important for Kant as an Enlightenment thinker. This is the only right Kants citizens may have, independently of the sovereigns will. Our conclusion is that both Kant and Hobbes emphasize peace and order under sovereign power although they do not agree on how such an ideal can be achieved.

Medical ethics in Finland: Some recent trends

This paper reviews the research done in Finland on medical ethics in the last three years and published in four leading journals. The general characteristics of this area are discussed and some comments on its most conspicuous representatives are offered. The conclusion reached is that medical ethics in Finland is still in a rather embryonic stage of development, and that more systematic and theoretically sophisticated approaches are required. However, since many physicians have become interested in ethical questions, it can be reasonably assumed that a more lively and theoretically grounded discussion will ensue in the near future.

The Language of Pain: A Philosophical Study of BDSM:

This philosophical article attempts to promote the recognition of the social world of BDSM in philosophical and tropological perspective. BDSM, and especially sadomasochism, is difficult to understand in its own, characteristic motivational perspective because such negative experiences as, say, pain and humiliation, indicate aversion rather than attraction. To cause pain to others is typically condemned. To cosset pain and suffering is said to be perverse. My main point is we that can better understand BDSM via its typical language and rhetoric, especially by paying attention to the key role of linguistic metonymy when we discuss the riddles of pain and pleasure. Also, this article discusses the various ways of talking about and potentially condemning BDSM by calling it a perversion or a paraphilic disorder. I conclude that, within some reasonable limits, BDSM is not vulnerable to the standard forms of criticism.

A threat like no other threat, George Berkeley against the freethinkers

ABSTRACT In this paper, our purpose is to show what George Berkeley really said about ethics and the background conditions of religious life. The point is that true happiness is only possible in a religious sense; it means happiness in afterlife. The major threat to this is freethinking, or what we see as emerging enlightened modernism. His rather quixotic fix against freethinking shows the man as he is behind all the conventional panegyrics. He is a real Anglican soldier who anticipated but never admitted a critical defeat in the most important of all battles. Interest in George Berkeley’s life’s work has been exceptionally selective. Yet his revolutionary immaterialism is only an early episode in his struggles towards a better society and religious life for all the people, regardless of their denomination. From this point of view, Alciphron is central. But he also develops his ethical ideas in his various minor writings, which have been largely overlooked.

Rhetoric and Corpuscularism in Berkeley's Siris

Berkeleys Siris may be an unduly neglected treatise. Yet it reveals and confirms its authors philosophical ambitions and achievements. The greatest of them is his theory of causality. Berkeley tries to show that agents can influence the world by using ethereal corpuscles as their instruments. These particles are both material but also in some sense immaterial or occult because they both follow and do not follow the laws of nature. Siris is a rhetorical text which uses analogy, metaphor, paradox, and ambiguity to illuminate the reader. I argue that the universe in Siris is ambiguous with respect to its material and immaterial essence. The world is at the same time scientific and material and metaphysical and immaterial. Berkeley fights against scientific mechanistic materialism when he subordinates science to Gods will. I try to clarify how ambiguity works for Berkeley the metaphysician in establishing the superiority of minds or agents over matter and mechamisms.

Hobbes on the Passions and Powerlessness

Any person is vulnerable to death and must suffer from the fear of sudden death. Thomas Hobbes builds on these premises in all of his work until in Leviathan he offers his final, comprehensive, and rhetorical account of them. Because of such fears, human beings are powerless in the sense that they cannot defend themselves in the condition of nature. Instead they can be supposed to make a covenant with a sovereign power. This paper analyzes HobbesAEs notion of emotions and compares it with Descartes. Special attention is paid to the naturalistic or physiological explanation of emotions, especially to the case of aversive motivations. According to Hobbes, aversions motivate people to act, but it can also be shown that according to his own principles aversive motivation cannot motivate but makes the person passive. HobbesAEs notions of rhetoric and scientific reasoning are also taken into account.

Elements of constraint

Abstract This paper analyses the various effects of threats and offers on freedom. Both threats and offers are related to social power. Threats are part of coercion and they are constraints. We try to say why this is so. Offers are more problematic. We identify soft and hard offers, or offers that can be refused and those that cannot. Hard offers have several interesting features, especially in relation to individual preference orders and sets of action alternatives. This paper studies problems which are implicit in Thomas Wartenberg’s study of the various forms of social power in this issue of Analyse & Kritik.