Throffer
In political philosophy, a throffer is a proposal that mixes an offer with a threat which will be carried out if the offer is not accepted. The term was first used in print by political philosopher Hillel Steiner; while other writers followed, it has not been universally adopted and it is sometimes considered synonymous with carrot and stick. Though the threatening aspect of a throffer need not be obvious, or even articulated at all, an overt example is: "Kill this man and receive £100; fail to kill him and I'll kill you."
Steiner differentiated offers, threats and throffers based on the preferability of compliance and noncompliance for the subject when compared to the normal course of events that would have come about were no intervention made. Steiner's account was criticised by philosopher Robert Stevens, who instead suggested that what was important in differentiating the kinds of intervention was whether performing or not performing the requested action was more or less preferable than it would have been were no intervention made. Throffers form part of the wider moral and political considerations of coercion, and form part of the question of the possibility of coercive offers. Contrary to received wisdom that only threats can be coercive, throffers lacking explicit threats have been cited as an example of coercive offers, while some writers argue that offers, threats and throffers may all be coercive if certain conditions are met. For others, by contrast, if a throffer is coercive, it is explicitly the threat aspect that makes it so, and not all throffers can be considered coercive.
The theoretical concerns surrounding throffers have been practically applied concerning workfare programmes. In such systems, individuals receiving social welfare have their aid decreased if they refuse the offer of work or education. Robert Goodin criticised workfare programmes which presented throffers to individuals receiving welfare, and was responded to by Daniel Shapiro, who found his objections unconvincing. Several writers have also observed that throffers presented to people convicted of crimes, particularly sex offenders, can result in more lenient sentences if they accept medical treatment. Other examples are offered by psychiatrist Julio Arboleda-Flórez, who presents concerns about throffers in community psychiatry, and management expert John J. Clancey, who talks about throffers in employment.
Origin and usage
The term throffer is a portmanteau of threat and offer. It was first used by Canadian philosopher Hillel Steiner in a 1974–75 Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society article. Steiner had considered a quote from the 1972 film The Godfather: "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse". While the line seemed to be amusingly ironic, Steiner was unsatisfied that the difference between an offer and a threat was merely that one promises to confer a benefit and the other a penalty. He thus coined throffer to describe the "offer" in The Godfather. One prominent thinker who adopted the term was political scientist Michael Taylor, and his work on throffers has been frequently cited.Throffer has not, however, been universally adopted; Michael R. Rhodes notes that there has been some controversy in the literature on whether to use throffer, citing a number of writers, including Lawrence A. Alexander, David Zimmerman and Daniel Lyons, who do not use the term. Some, including political scientists Deiniol Jones and Andrew Rigby, consider throffer to be synonymous with carrot and stick, an idiom which refers to the way a donkey is offered a carrot to encourage compliance, while noncompliance is punished with a stick. Other writers, while electing to use the word, consider it a poor one. For instance, literary scholar Daniel Shore calls it "a somewhat unfortunate term", while using it in his analysis of John Milton's Paradise Regained.
Definitions
In addition to Steiner's original account of throffers, other authors have suggested definitions and ideas on how to differentiate throffers from threats and offers.Steiner's account
In the article that introduces the term throffer, Steiner considers the difference between interventions in the form of a threat and those in the form of an offer. He concludes that the distinction is based on how the consequences of compliance or noncompliance differ for the subject of the intervention when compared with "the norm". Steiner observes that a concept of "normalcy" is presupposed in literature on coercion, as changes in well-being for the subject of an intervention are not merely relative, but absolute; any possibility of an absolute change requires a standard, and this standard is "the description of the normal and predictable course of events, that is, the course of events which would confront the recipient of the intervention were the intervention not to occur".For an offer, such as "you may use my car whenever you like", the consequence of compliance "represents a situation which is preferred to the norm". Noncompliance, that is, not taking up the offer of the use of the car, is identical to the norm, and so neither more nor less preferable. Threats, on the other hand, are characterised by compliance that leads to an outcome less preferable to the norm, with noncompliance leading to an outcome less desirable still. For instance, if someone is threatened with "your money or your life", compliance would lead to them losing their money, while noncompliance would lead to them losing their life. Both are less desirable than the norm, but, for the subject of the threat, losing money is more desirable than being killed. A throffer is a third kind of intervention. It differs from both a threat and an offer, as compliance is preferable to the norm, while noncompliance is less preferable than the norm.
For Steiner, all of offers, threats and throffers affect the practical deliberations of their recipient in the same way. What is significant for the subject of the intervention is not the extent to which the consequences of compliance or noncompliance differ in desirability from the norm, but the extent to which they differ in desirability from each other. Thus, an offer does not necessarily exert less influence on its recipient than a threat. The strength of the force exerted by an intervention depends upon the difference in desirability between compliance and noncompliance alone, regardless of the manner of the intervention.
Stevens's account
Responding to Steiner, Robert Stevens provides examples of what he categorises variously as offers, threats and throffers that fail to meet Steiner's definitions. He gives an example of an intervention he considers a throffer, as opposed to a threat, but in which both compliance and noncompliance are less preferable to the norm. The example is that of someone who makes the demand "either you accept my offer of a handful of beans for your cow, or I kill you". For the subject, keeping the cow is preferred to both compliance and noncompliance with the throffer. Using this and other examples, Stevens argued that Steiner's account of differentiating the three kinds of interventions is incorrect.In its place, Stevens suggests that determining whether an intervention is a throffer depends not on the desirability of compliance and noncompliance when compared to the norm, but on the desirability of the actions entailed in compliance or noncompliance when compared with what their desirability would have been were no intervention made. He proposes that a throffer is made if P attempts to encourage Q to do A by increasing "the desirability to Q of Q doing A relative to what it would have been if P made no proposal and decrease the desirability to Q of Q doing not-A relative to what it would have been if P made no proposal". An offer, by contrast, increases the desirability to Q of Q doing A compared to how it would have been without P's intervention, leaving the desirability to Q of Q doing not-A as it would have been. A threat decreases the desirability to Q of Q doing not-A compared to what it would have been without P's intervention, while leaving the desirability to Q of Q doing A as it would have been.
Kristjánsson's account
Political philosopher Kristján Kristjánsson differentiates threats and offers by explaining that the former is a proposal that creates an obstacle, while the latter is one kind of proposal that does not. He also draws a distinction between tentative proposals and final proposals, which he feels earlier authors ignored. A tentative proposal does not logically create any kind of obstacle for its subject, and, as such, is an offer. For instance, "if you fetch the paper for me, you'll get candy" is a tentative proposal, as it does not logically entail that a failure to fetch the paper will result in no candy; it is possible that candy can be acquired by another route. In other words, if the subject fetches the paper, then they get candy. By contrast, if the proposal was a final proposal, it would take the form of "if and only if you fetch the paper for me, you'll get candy". This entails that candy can only be acquired if the subject fetches the paper, and no other way. For Kristjánsson, this kind of final proposal constitutes a throffer. There is an offer to fetch the paper, and a threat that candy can only be acquired through this route. As such, an obstacle has been placed on the route of acquiring candy.Previous authors provided moral and statistical analyses of various thought experiments to determine whether the proposals they involve are threats or offers. On Kristjánsson's account, by contrast, all of the thought experiments considered are throffers. Instead, he argues, the previous thinkers' analyses attempted to differentiate offers that limit freedom from those that do not. They conflate two tasks, that of differentiating threats and offers and that of differentiating freedom-restricting threats from non-freedom-restricting threats. He concludes that the thinkers' methods are also inadequate for determining the difference between freedom-restricting and non-freedom-restricting threats, for which a test of moral responsibility would be required.