[ExI] pussy riot case

[Anders Sandberg]

On 22/08/2012 21:04, spike wrote:
> Do you think an oath, once sworn, must be binding under *all
> circumstances*, including a change in the perceived nature of the entity the
> oath was sworn to?
>
> Ben Zaiboc
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
> PFC Manning was still on active duty when he leaked.  The military is a
> special case.  Until their hitch is up, no they don't have the legal option
> of breaking the oaths that they chose to enter when they volunteered.

There is an important difference between legal and moral obligations. 
Laws are about what society allows or not, morality is what one ought to 
do.  While we might wish laws to be moral, and might even have a moral 
duty to obey laws that have come about legitimately (see the discussion 
surrounding the trial of Socrates), laws are not in themselves moral. 
There are plenty that are immoral, and some are so immoral that a moral 
person should break them.

Oaths are a bit different. They are speech acts where you state a 
constraint on your future behaviour.  Keeping an oath is a moral act; 
breaking it means you either did not mean it in the first place, that 
you cannot constrain yourself (these two reflecting badly on your 
trustworthiness), or that something more important than your reputation 
and beliefs overruled the oath. But note that an oath in this sense 
cannot be compelled: you cannot demand somebody swear something and mean 
it, it has to be a voluntary decision. Hence oaths sworn in many social 
situations are somewhat suspect, since they might be done for blending 
in rather than being sincere.

The military might have both laws, oaths and moral rules, not to mention 
sizeable social pressure. But these constraints on action are not 
absolute: for any ethical system I know, one can construct cases where 
the right thing to do is to break them. The better the constraints are, 
the more rare such cases would be.

To get back to the thread name, a Russian prosecutor might argue that it 
is important that people follow the laws that have been agreed on by the 
Duma and morally important to respect the Church. But no doubt the punk 
ladies would argue that the government and its laws were not legitimate 
enough to be respected, and by supporting the morally corrupt government 
the Church had also lost its moral protection. The fact that a 
prosecutor can win the case doesn't mean he is right about the moral 
matter. And conversely, being convinced that the government does not 
have moral authority will not protect you from its legal or extralegal 
powers.



-- 
Anders Sandberg,
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Faculty of Philosophy
Oxford University