The normative significance of conscience

2013

EMBERS OF LIBERAL SOCIETIES respect conscience. They generally consider it wrong to force another to do something she thinks is morally odious. John Rawls asserts, "the question of equal liberty of conscience is settled. It is one of the fixed points of our considered judgments of justice " (1971: 206). In this paper, we attempt to explain why liberty of conscience is a fixed point, or, why conscience has normative significance. Our answer, which draws on the resources of the contractualist tradition in moral philosophy, is not only of interest in its own right, but also clarifies a number of practical questions concerning the legal protection of conscience. We begin in section 1 by developing a definition of conscience and explaining what it means to violate conscience. In section 2, we criticize three attempts to explain the normative significance of conscience, including Martha Nussbaum's recent defense. In section 3, we develop a contractualist explanation of the normative significance of conscience that we believe can remedy the defects in the accounts assessed in section 2 and ground a norm of respect for conscience. In section 4, we conclude.

Philosophy & Social Criticism, 2008

This paper is an exploration of the role of conscience in the justification of human rights. I argue that in both the western tradition of natural rights and the non-western traditions, human rights are justified, in part, because of their appeal to conscience, and not simply because they issue from a divine source or are based on reason. In contrast, contemporary justifications of human rights primarily look for an objective foundation or simply assert the pragmatic importance of human rights as their justification. While there are distinct advantages to this way of arguing, there are also problems, which I will discuss. As an alternative, I outline Arendt's understanding of conscience as the ability to be with and think with one's self as a secular alternative to both a non-secular version of conscience, and the denial of conscience implicit in contemporary theories. Her view of political judgment helps us to understand how conscience can be understood as subjective but not arbitrary. This paper brings Arendt's insights on conscience and judgment to bear on contemporary discourses of human rights.

New Blackfriars, 1959

MODERATOR: The subject of this disputation is a fundamental one and touches the centre of every moral dilemma-for the individual as well as for the community at large. Conscience and law. Are they enemies, and is the most we can hope to achieve an armed neutrality, so that the conflict between them can at lcast be kept within bounds? Or are thcy brothers, twins-and Siamese twins at that, so that one must necessarily imply the other? Of course we must first want to see what the words mean, for here, as always, we are a t the mercy of the labels we use to avoid the painful work of thinking. Conscience-too easily it can be the name for the spontaneous response of anarchy or anguish: law-as easily it can be the title for no nonsense, the totalitarian's eternal alibi. To decide what is their relationship, then, must demand a careful scrutiny of what their function is: a function that is proper to the human person, with a mind to know and a will to implement his knowledge. That is why the form of this disputation may be specially useful, demanding as it does a patient definition of terms, and a guarded inspection of their use in argument. I The slightly abbreviated text of a Disputation held at the Aquinas Centre, St Dominic's Priory, N.W.5, on May I, 1958, and broadcast on the Third Programme of the B.B.C.

Oxford University Press eBooks, 2017

I am very grateful to Cécile Laborde and Aurélia Bardon for inviting me to contribute to this collection and to the conference that preceded it, as well as for their editorial advice. I am also grateful to Melissa Williams, Chiara Cordelli and Astrid Busekist for their help in thinking through the themes in this paper, to Peter Jones for sending me his latest articles, and to Melis Pinar Akdag for help in preparing this piece for publication. Work on this article was financed in part by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation, as part of a larger project on democratic ethics.

IOSR Journal of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR - JHSS), 2018

Objective moral norms which consist of moral precepts, rules or commands are inconsequential without a moral sense or faculty which perceives and applies them in concrete situations. This moral sense is a person " s conscience which tells him subjectively what is right or wrong and which manifests his moral obligations to him. Privatization of conscience arises when this faculty is abused, when in the name of conscience the state and its laws are opposed, when one dissociates oneself from the value standards of the society and when one makes moral judgments an individual affair and is only accountable to his conscience. This paper takes a critical look at conscience as a moral faculty and its relationship with objective norms of morality with a view to determining which is superior. Employing analytic as well as critical expository methods, the paper examines the concepts of conscience and moral norms. It also considers the nature and divisions of conscience as well as the problem of " privatization of conscience ". In addressing the problem of privatization of conscience the work discussed the binding force of conscience, the extent to which conscience should inform moral judgment before an action and whether such moral judgments should be based on reason or sentiments. In conclusion the work affirms the independence and superiority of objective norms of morality and warns against the " privatization of conscience. "

Journal of Moral Philosophy, 2021

In this paper, I outline and defend a commonly-held moral view which has received surprisingly little sustained philosophical attention. This view, which I call the ‘authority of conscience,’ states that believing ourselves to have moral obligations to act in a certain way does in fact create an obligation to act in that way. Although I do not provide a positive case for the principle of authoritative conscience, beyond its popularity and intuitive force, I defend it against several prima facie objections. I then go on to demonstrate that the principle does not entail any anti-realist metaethical commitments, and is therefore compatible in particular, and contrary to appearances, with plausible formulations of moral realism.

Journal of Law and Religion, 2015

This paper argues that secular legal systems need a better defined space for freedom of conscience because this important right has been crowded out by both freedom of religion and freedom of thought. Based on the principles of the Protestant Reformation, American constitutionalism expanded the idea of freedom of conscience to the point of making it almost interchangeable with freedom of religion. On the other hand, international law, followed by European constitutional law, reduced the political force of the concept of freedom of conscience by assimilating it to freedom of thought. And yet freedom of conscience cannot be treated just the same as either religious freedom or freedom of thought. By nature, the secular legal systems of political communities are moral, but nonreligious. So morality and religion affect legal systems in different ways. For this reason, freedom of conscience and freedom of religion should be protected using different legal devices. The so-called privilege of abstaining (beneficium abstinendi) best protects freedom of conscience; freedom of religion, by contrast, is appropriately protected by what I call the religious exception (exceptio religiosa). The consequences of applying these legal tools in particular cases, and their proper scopes, depend on the constitutional model of the political community in question. But in general, an increasingly globalized, diverse, and multicultural society demands a wider application of both these legal tools.

Schuklenk and Smalling argue that it is practically impossible for civic institutions to meet the conditions necessary to ensure that conscientious objection does not conflict with the core principles of liberal democracies. In this response, I propose an alternative definition of conscience to that offered by Schuklenk and Smalling. I discuss what I call the ‘traditional’ notion of conscience, and contrast this with the existentialist conception of conscience (which I take to be a close cousin of the view targeted by Schuklenk and Smalling). I argue that the traditional notion, grounded in an objective moral order, avoids the criticisms advanced by Schuklenk and Smalling; the existentialist conception, in contrast, does not. I conclude by discussing the benefits and risks of a ‘restricted view’ of respect for conscience.

Georgetown University-Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, 2015

Moral reasons are considerations that count in favor of or against actions in light of a moral standard. They can be functionally defined as authoritative guides to morally right action. Embedded in this concept is a deep tension between the two features that account for moral reasons having this unique function: namely, practicality and objectivity. On the one hand, in order for a consideration to be objective, as a conceptual matter, it must be mind independent. On the other hand, in order for a consideration to be practical, as a conceptual matter, it must be mind dependent. Since no consideration can be both mind dependent and mind independent, no consideration could be a moral reason, on the innocent functional analysis. I call this the puzzle about moral reasons. The going solutions to the puzzle require conceptual revision, foregoing the idea that moral reasons are, as a conceptual matter, either practical or objective. This dissertation defends a solution to the puzzle that ...

S. New Eng. Roundtable Symp. LJ, 2007