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to do what we think right; or, as Wolff puts it, make ourselves |
the authors of our decisions. Faced with a choice between doing |
what we think right and what we think wrong, of course we |
ought to do what we think right. But this, though true, is not |
much help. What we need to know is not whether we should |
do what we decide to be right, but how we should decide what |
is right. |
293 |
Practical Ethics |
Think about the difference of opinion between members of |
groups like the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and more lawabiding |
members of an organization like Britain's Royal Society |
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA): ALF members |
think inflicting pain on animals is, unless justified by extraordinary |
circumstances, wrong, and if the best way to stop |
it is by breaking the law then they think that breaking the law |
is right. RSPCA members - let us assume - also think that |
inflicting pain on animals is normally wrong, but they think |
breaking the law is wrong, too, and they think that the wrongness |
of breaking the law cannot be justified by the goal of stopping |
the unjustifiable infliction of pain on animals. Now suppose |
there are people opposed to inflicting pain on animals who are |
uncertain whether they should join the militant lawbreakers or |
the more orthodox animal welfare group. How does telling these |
people to do what they think right, or to be the author of their |
own decisions, resolve their uncertainty? The uncertainty is an |
uncertainty about what is the right thing to do, not about |
whether to do what one has decided to be right. |
This point can be obscured by talk of 'following one's conscience' |
irrespective of what the law commands. Some who talk |
of 'following conscience' mean no more than doing what, on |
reflection, one thinks right - and this may, as in the case of our |
imagined RSPCA members, depend on what the law commands. |
Others mean by 'conscience' not something dependent |
on critical reflective judgment, but a kind of internal voice that |
tells us that something is wrong and may continue to tell us |
this despite our careful reflective decision, based on all the relevant |
ethical considerations, that the action is not wrong. In |
this sense of 'conscience' an unmarried woman brought up as |
a strict Roman Catholic to believe that sex outside marriage is |
always wrong may abandon her religion and come to hold that |
there is no sound basis for restricting sex to marriage - yet |
continue to feel guilty when she has sex. She may refer to these |
294 |
Ends and Means |
guilt feelings as her 'conscience' but if that is her conscience, |
should she follow it? |
To say that we should follow our conscience is unobjectionable |
- and unhelpful - when 'following conscience' means |
doing what, on reflection, one thinks right. When 'following |
conscience' means doing as one's 'internal voice' prompts one |
to do, however, to follow one's conscience is to abdicate one's |
responsibility as a rational agent, to fail to take all the relevant |
factors into account and act on one's best judgment of the rights |
and wrongs of the situation. The 'internal voice' is more likely |
to be a product of one's upbringing and education than a source |
of genuine ethical insight. |
Presumably neither Thoreau nor Wolff wish to suggest that |
we should always follow our conscience in the 'internal voice' |
sense. They must mean, if their views are to be at all plausible, |
that we should follow our judgment about what we ought to |
do. In this case the most that can be said for their recommendations |
is that they remind us that decisions about obeying the |
law are'ethical decisions that the law itself cannot settle for us. |
We should not assume, without reflection, that if the law prohibits, |
say, stealing videotapes from laboratories, it is always |
wrong to do so - any more than we should assume that if the |
law prohibits hiding Jews from the Nazis, it is wrong to do so. |
Law and ethics are distinct. At the same time, this does not |
mean that the law carries no moral weight. It does not mean |
that any action that would have been right if it had been legal |
must be right although it is in fact illegal. That an action is illegal |
may be of ethicaL as well as legaL significance. Whether it really |
is ethically significant is a separate question. |
LA W AND ORDER |
If we think that a practice is seriously wrong, and if we have |
the courage and ability to disrupt this practice by breaking the |
295 |
Practical Ethics |
law, how could the illegality of this action provide an ethical |
reason against it? To answer a question as specific as this, we |
should first ask a more general one: why have laws at all? |
Human beings are social in nature, but not so social that we |
do not need to protect ourselves against the risk of being assaulted |
or killed by our fellow humans. We might try to do this |
by forming vigilante organizations to prevent assaults and punish |
those who commit them; but the results would be haphazard |
and liable to grow into gang warfare. Thus it is desirable to |
have, as John Locke said long ago, 'an established, settled, |
known law', interpreted by an authoritative judge and backed |
with sufficient power to carry out the judge's decisions. |
If people voluntarily refrained from assaulting others, or acting |
in other ways inimical to a harmonious and happy social existence, |
we might manage without judges and sanctions. We |
would still need law-like conventions about such matters as |
which side of the road one drives on. Even an anarchist utopia |
would have some settled principles of cooperation. So we would |
have something rather like law. In reality, not everyone is going |
to voluntarily refrain from behaviour, like assaults, that others |
cannot tolerate. Nor is it only the danger of individual acts like |
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