by wormwood » Wed Jul 15, 2015 9:04 pm
Spider and phos:
Making a moral choice under coercion isn't moral on the part of the person making the choice, but may force everyone to choose the moral choice. If I tie you down and don't let you cheat on your wife when you wanted to while drunk one night, you did not get to choose the moral choice, but the moral choice was enforced anyway, just not due to your agency. So it is possible for the moral option to be pre chosen for you in a coercive situation.
To put it another way, in a hypothetical situation where only 2 outcomes, A and B, are possible and most of society agrees A is moral and B is immoral, society may choose to ban choice B. The people abiding by A are doing the generally agreed upon moral thing, though they are not necessarily moral themselves as they had no real choice. It is a moral gain for the society but not the individual necessarily.
Sorry if this is more confusing, it just seems like you guys are talking about 2 different things.
For among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised
-Nicolo Machiavelli