moral rules as expressive symbols

Mind Association

Moral Rules as Expressive SymbolsAuthor(s): J. R. CameronSource: Mind, New Series, Vol. 90, No. 358 (Apr., 1981), pp. 224-242Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2253339 .

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Mind (I98I) Vol. xc, 224-242

Moral Rules as Expressive Symbols

J. R. CAMERON

There are different sorts of justification that a moral rule can have -different reasons we can give for having a certain rule as part of our social morality, or our personal moral code. I want to identify and consider one sort of justification or rationale for a moral rule that seems to have gone unrecognized, namely the case where a rule is seen as a symbol, which people choose and maintain as a vehicle to express some basic moral conviction.

i. How can we 'choose' moral rules?

First, we need to be clear about how a moral rule can be conceived of as adopted or sustained by our own choice.

To see a rule as a moral rule, we must regard it as authoritative or binding on us. In the simple case, we see it as having an inherent validity or authority, which we merely acknowledge in a moral judgment ('judgment' implying that the validity exists independ- ently of ourselves); the rule is morally obligatory or inescapable. But in other cases, the rule is seen as chosen by us, in some sense, and yet still binding on us; it is morally optional, though still in some way authoritative.

Thus in social morality, we would probably distinguish between, say, the obligatory rule prohibiting gratuitous assault, which we feel we have no option but to recognize, and rules about the duties of a parent or other relative towards children: the latter rules, we feel, might be different from what they actually are without our communal morality necessarily being in consequence any less adequate. Though not literally 'chosen', they are sustained by something akin to a decision or policy, rather than by any conviction of their intrinsic validity. Similarly, an individual may have personal principles which he recognizes as (literally) chosen by him, not morally forced upon him; this comes out, for example, when he says 'I make it a principle always/never to . . .'-the verb 'make' indicating that the principle's authority derives from his own 'personal enactment).

The puzzle is: how are we able both to recognize such rules as chosen, and yet also to treat them as in fact binding for us? The

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MORAL RULES AS EXPRESSIVE SYMBOLS 225

explanation, in its general form, is as follows. Consider a rule, R, of the form 'Always do A', where doing A is doing-A'-when- placed-in-circumstances-C (A' may be an act or an omission). Call the pattern enjoined by R A-behaviour. Now a reason for accepting R may relate solely to R's content-its prescribing of A-behaviour; or it may refer in some way to the situation of having R as a rule. Where we accept R purely on account of its content, because we see any deviation from A-behaviour as inherently bad or wrong (whether bad or wrong in itself, or inherently likely to be produc- tive of bad or wrong), we will regard R as a morally obligatory rule, which we have no choice but to acknowledge.' In the sort of case we are concerned with, in contrast, we see R as morally optional because our reason for accepting it does not relate solely to its content-to what it happens to prescribe. Rather, we associate in some way our having R as a rule with some moral requirement or goal which we see as inescapable, and feel we must respond to; adopting R is our response, or part of our response, to this moral demand. What specifically makes us see R as morally optional rather than obligatory is the fact that this underlying demand is related to R in a non-determining way: adopting R is only one of various possible strategies we might follow in responding to the demand. We might adopt some other rule, or opt for some quite different kind of response; and it is we who must decide between these alternatives.

However, once we have adopted R, it becomes (and remains, for as long as it continues to be upheld) the way in which we have chosen to try to comply with the basic moral imperative, or to realize the moral goal; and so some of the authority of that imperative or goal attaches by transference to this adopted rule: it acquires a bindingness, even though we still recognize it to be morally optional, and erected by our own decision.

2. Choosing a rule as a symbol versus choosing it for its consequences

Within this general pattern, our move from moral demand to chosen rule may take different forms. I want to explore the case where we choose to have a rule as a symbolic expression of our recognition of the moral demand. But it will be helpful to approach

I Seeing A-behaviour as inherently required, though necessary, may not be sufficient to make us see R as morally obligatory; the actual overall consequences of having R as a rule might tell against having it as a rule. Arguably, we should never accept a rule of social morality as simply obligatory, without considering its actual consequences.

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this symbolic rationale for a rule through a contrast with the much more familiar case where we adopt or sustain a rule on grounds relating to the consequences of having that rule.

(a) The consequentialist rationale. When we accept R on a consequential basis, what matters about R is the actual effects of having it as a rule, and not the nature or moral quality of the A-behaviour it enjoins. Usually (though not always), it will be effects other than minimizing the actual incidence of F-occurrences that matter.

In the case of a social rule, the effects that matter will very often be social-confidence effects-the effect of generating a social confidence that A-behaviour will be the (almost) universal pattern, and effects which flow from this confidence. (It may be the confidence itself that matters, or the effects it generates, or both.) It is because our acceptance of R in preference to any other rule depends partly on our judgment as to the actual overall effects of having R (coupled with our moral evaluation of these effects) that we see R as a chosen rule and not a morally obligatory one.

(What is crucial here is not that the judgment about effects is our judgment-though very often it is just a preferred interpretation of inconclusive evidence. Rather it is that the judgment is factual, and is always open to revision in the light of non-moral considerations.)

In similar fashion, an individual may decide to adopt R as a rule for himself, on the strength of the consequences he expects to flow from having it. He may hope that his explicit adoption of R will strengthen his resolve to do A when faced with pressures or temp- tations not to, or will influence others' behaviour, through their knowing he has this principle; or he may hope that by following the rule 'Always do A', he will manage to do something else, B- this, rather than A itself, being his real moral objective. (E.g., he may actually manage to accord others' interests equal importance with his own if he tries to follow the rule 'Put others' interests first'.)

(b) Having a rule as a way of expressing a conviction. The consequentialist pattern of thinking involved in these cases is very familiar to us, especially from discussion of proposed new laws, or changes in the rules of games; rule-utilitarianism, on one interpretation, presents it as underpinning all moral rules. We might think it is the only possible way of deciding whether to adopt or sustain a morally optional rule as part of our social or personal morality. However, individuals or groups can and do set up and sustain a




rule, not for the sake of the supposed consequences of having it, but as a symbol, a way of expressing a moral conviction that they have about the goodness, rightness, or importance of something.

In introducing this idea, I should stress from the start that though the two sorts of rationale for having a rule, the consequentialist and the symbolic, are fundamentally different, they are far from being mutually exclusive. (They may perhaps not be jointly exhaustive either, though in what follows it will do no harm to assume that they are.) A given rule may be, and often will be, justified partly in terms of its symbolic function and partly in terms of the consequences that flow from having it; some members of a group may see a shared rule as having a consequentialist justification, while others see it as an expressive symbol. This makes it hard to provide indisputable examples of moral rules, and especially rules of social morality, whose rationale is clearly a purely symbolic one.

However, even in social morality we can readily identify rules which are widely treated as partly or largely, if not wholly, symbolic in function. Prominent examples are many rules of sexual morality, various sorts of rules of courtesy, and rules connected with 'respect for life', such as rules about abortion, euthanasia, and other rules of medical ethics.

Turning to individual mnorality, we can see that people may, and do, adopt all sorts of rules as symbols; but for example, the practice of vegetarianism, or not buying goods from racist states, may be adopted by individuals as symbolic expressions of moral attitudes, rather than for the sake of any practical consequences which they may be supposed to have.

We need, in our dealings with others, to be ready to recognize this way of regarding a rule. It is very easy to fail to appreciate that someone accepts a certain non-obligatory rule either partly or wholly as an expressive symbol, and not purely on consequentialist grounds. He may not be able himself to articulate clearly what his attitude to the rule is; and we, in trying to help him articulate it, will probably find that the possible lines of justification which naturally occur to us are consequentialist ones. The dominant influence of Utilitarianism in our culture may blind us to the very possibility of any other kind of justification. And if this happens, we may be quite unable to understand a not uncommon type of moral position.

Take an example. There are clearly many people today who feel



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that though abortion is right in certain circumstances, we should retain certain restrictions on its availability. Many of these people, I think, would not be happy to argue in favour of these restrictions merely by appeal to the effects of having them; if pressed, they would probably say that they connect these restrictions with 'respect for human life'. What do they mean by this? They are not talking about the actual conservation of human life. For they do not see abortion as the taking of life (if they did, they would surely oppose it altogether); nor are they suggesting that making abortion freely available is likely to lead (through the influence of this change on our other attitudes) to life being taken more readily, or protected less assiduously, in other contexts (since this is just a reason in terms of long-term consequences). So if we insist that restrictions on abortion can be connected with the importance we attach to life only via a link either of a definitional kind ('abortion kills babies'), or else of a consequential kind, we will find the position these people take quite unintelligible. But there is an explanation which fits their position exactly, and makes it quite coherent; namely, that the link is for them neither definitional nor causal, but symbolic: the restrictions on abortion, for them, serve to express for life. (Whether this is the correct interpretation of their position will become clear in section 4.)

On what basis do we choose a rule as an expressive symbol? In a consequentialist justification for the rule R, our ground for linking R with some acknowledged moral demand(s) is our belief that having R will be the best means to the fulfilling of the demand(s). Where, in contrast, R is adopted and sustained as a symbol, we make the connection in seeing our having and following R as an appropriate way of giving expression to our conviction about the rightness of the given moral demand. The belief about means to end(s) involved in a consequentialist justification is subject to well- established criteria of rationality; this allows us to appraise the adequacy of such a justification (assuming we accept the soundness of its evaluative component), and to see it as objectively valid or invalid. In contrast, it seems almost impossible to articulate any systematic rational constraints that bear upon the choice of a rule as a symbol, or to specify principles that govern the appropriateness of a rule as an expression of a given conviction. As in any case where we read symbolic import into a pattern of action, we may be guided by conventional links, or by familiar cultural links; or we may make an entirely ad hoc connection, based on some natural




association, conscious or unconscious. The link must appear appropriate; but what is seen as appropriate will vary from culture to culture, and often from person to person. In a given case, a particular choice of symbol might be open to rational criticism; but we cannot in general expect some one choice to emerge as the right and rational one. (On the defensibility of having symbolic rules at all, see section 5 below.)

Rational or not, once we have made our choice, the moral authority of the imperative or goal to which our conviction relates will be transmitted to our chosen rule. When we adopt R as an expression of our conviction, it stands for us as a symbol of the moral value we feel impelled to respect; and to fail to respect R, the symbol, is to fail to respect what it symbolizes. (To put it another way: the rule is adopted as expression of the conviction; failing to observe it will express lack of real conviction.) Thus a link created by convention or decision transmits an authority we see as independent of human choice.

(There is always in theory the possibility of changing our symbolism, of course. However, quite apart from practical difficulties involved in doing so, our adoption of a symbol must of its very nature involve committing ourselves to it, according some measure of permanence to it. If we chop and change our symbols too much, the very procedure of adopting a symbol will lose its effectiveness for us, because we will not be able to take our espousal of a symbol seriously. I suspect that the moral malaise we suffer from today is partly attributable to our having changed our symbolic moral rules too freely over the past few generations.)

We need to be quite clear that this symbolic rationale for having a rule is not simply a special sub-case of the general consequentialist type of rationale; it is not a matter of a rule's being adopted and sustained as a symbol for the sake of some consequences which are expected to flow from the existence of this symbol. To see this, compare the sort of case we are interested in with the following sorts of case.

(i) Suppose that we uphold the rule R ('Always do A') as a rule of our social morality for the sake of the social confidence it creates, because we see it as desirable that members of the community should feel assured that they will not be on the receiving end of deviations from A-behaviour (which they would not welcome). In this case, the community's 'implicit proclamation' (as we might call it) of the rule R can be seen as intended to give this assurance



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to its members; its action of maintaining R may be seen as carrying another meaning in addition to its primary meaning qua prescrip- tion, in that it serves to tell these members 'Rest assured of the community's will that deviations from A-behaviour will not be visited on you'. So understood, the community's upholding of R can be seen as a symbolic way of reassuring its members.

However, where R functions in this way to communicate the community's will to its members, it exists merely as a means to an ulterior end; if the assurance in question could be created in people in some other way, the symbolism could quite happily be dispensed with. In the kind of case that interests us, in contrast, the symbolic expression is not an optional means to an ulterior goal, but arises out of a conviction which demands expression; the expression is an end in its own right, and (often, at least) it is not seen as optional: we cannot choose whether to express or not (though we are free to choose the mode of expression).

(ii) Another kind of means-to-end symbolic rule is the symbolic 'self-reminding' rule. A car-owner, conscious of the need to con- serve non-renewable resources, might adopt a rule never to use his car when public transport will serve, not for the sake of the saving of the world's oil supplies effected thereby, nor to 'set an example to others', but simply as a constant reminder to himself that natural resources need to be husbanded and not squandered. His rule does function as a symbol of a moral truth; but it is adopted purely as a means of keeping that truth prominently in mind. (He might have adopted some other, non-symbolic way of doing this -reading books on natural resources, say.) Again, the kind of symbolism we are interested in is not instrumental in this way.

There is a quite different kind of case from these two, which we also need to distinguish from the case we are concerned with. We have various social rules which enjoin or prohibit certain kinds of act because of the significance or meaning that these bear. Certain gestures, though of no moral significance in themselves qua pieces of behaviour, are conventionally seen as expressive of, e.g., dislike or contempt, and on this account are morally prohibited in certain situations. Equally, an act which is taken as expressive of apprecia- tion, say, or regret, may be required in certain situations. Here the symbolism is prior to and independent of the rule, not created by or embodied in it. (If the rule itself is adopted as a symbolic expression of an attitude, this will generate a further symbolism, which will probably interact with the significance originally read into the



MORAL RULES AS EXPRESSIVE SYMBOLS 23I

act. Understanding some areas of social morality consists partly in unravelling the complexities which arise in such cases.)

3. How can a rule be seen as expressing a moral conviction?

So much by way of identifying the sort of rationale for a moral rule that we are concerned with. We want now to try to make sense of this rationale. To do so, we need to try to understand how the adopting and sustaining of a rule can be seen as expressing an attitude or conviction.

Usually, when we talk about something 'functioning as a symbol', or about the 'expressing' of an attitude or conviction, we are talking about communicating. Where we are not, I would suggest, we are talking about an activity or process which is sufficiently like communicating to make it appropriate for us to apply the concepts of a symbol, and of expressing something, in an extended way. So let us start by seeing what we can make of the idea of rules as expressive symbols, on the assumption that the expressing in question is communicative expressing, expressing to someone.

(a) Expressing a conviction to others. To whom, then, are we expressing a moral attitude in adopting or sustaining a rule as an expressive symbol? In answering this question, we need to deal separately with social rules and individual rules; take social rules first.

Where a community regards some public rule as symbolic of a shared attitude, I think it takes the rule primarily to be an expression by the community, as a body, to its members, of this attitude which the community as a whole holds or purports to hold. A society which has a firm prohibition on sexual relations outside marriage, if it maintains this as a symbolic rule, is declaring to its members something like this: 'This is the kind of community you belong to, one which holds the marriage-bond in high esteem.'- Since the community as a body is clearly distinct as an agent from its individual members, there is no difficulty about deploying the concept of expressive communication in this sort of context. And the community may have reasons for wanting not merely to ensure that its collective convictions are known to all its members, but to present these convictions vividly in some telling and dramatic form, perhaps that of some rule or practice it up- holds. (Such a symbolism may have a special function in presenting the community's convictions to its young members.) As we shall see shortly, this way of communicating convictions, by giving them



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a public material embodiment, is precisely what we think of as the expressing of these convictions (as opposed, e.g., to the reporting of them or stating that they exist).

Thus the concept of a rule's having an expressive function can be elucidated plausibly in the case of social rules. What about personal principles? Suppose that someone were, like Schweitzer, to decide to express his respect for all life, human and animal, by adopting a rule never to kill any living thing; to whom would he be expressing this attitude?

He might of course be expressing it to others. In some ages people have publicly adopted a distinctive regimen or rule of life in order to tell others what sort of people they are, what they believe in. Religious and political examples spring readily to mind here; but there are doubtless also examples of people declaring purely moral attitudes to the world by espousing personal principles. In our own age we are much more chary of adopting moral postures in this way, perhaps recognizing the attendant risks of hypocrisy or self-righteousness; we prefer to make our moral position clear less ostentatiously, in deeds rather than the easily- abused currency of symbolic declaration. But a person can still express to others by symbolic means some basic conviction that he holds; and one such means is publicly committing himself to the following of some rule.

However, I think we need also to recognize a quite different and much more important kind of expressing of an individual conviction.

(b) Expressing a conviction to oneself. We quite often speak of a person as expressing a moral attitude through the very act of adopting a principle, where the expressing is conceived of as embodied in the resolving itself, irrespective of whether this resolve is then broadcast to others. Here the individual cannot be communicating to anyone else; he must be expressing something to himself, if to anyone at all. Does this make sense? Or are we simply confused when we apply the word 'express' in describing this situation?

Rather tentatively, I would offer the following account. What we have here is a natural extension of the concept of expression, of the kind hinted at earlier. To understand the nature of this extension, and see why it is natural, we need to look more closely at the concept of expressing something. In the ordinary case of expressing, what we express is a state of mind, whether occurrent or




dispositional, and expressing it is conceived of as deliberately making this private and hidden state public, giving it by one's own volition a concrete embodiment in the public world, and thereby making it accessible to others. Expressing a state of mind is conceived to be something quite different from merely reporting its existence; when someone reports to us how they feel, in a state- ment, we don't necessarily have the experience of seeming to be confronted with the person's actual state of mind itself, of having it made manifest to us in his act of reporting. (Where the person's report does seem to make manifest how he feels, we will call it an 'expressive' report.)

(Does this way of thinking involve a philosophically objection- able form of dualism? I suggest not: it merely presupposes the privacy of many kinds of mental states and attitudes-something that any view of the mental must allow for.)

We can pick out three strands in this conception of what it is for someone to express a feeling or attitude. There is the idea of rendering or transforming something mental and private into a different, and somehow concrete form. There is the idea that this new embodiment is accessible to others, that the state in question can, through this concrete embodiment, become manifest to others, an object of something like acquaintance for them. And finally there is the idea that this converting of something private into something public and manifest to others is done by deliberate choice: to express something is to reveal it deliberately, not to evince it, reveal it incidentally, or let it out.

It is easily seen that these features of expressing are all present in the cases of individual or collective expressing-to-others con- sidered in (a) above. But can we see them as present, in some sense, in cases of 'expressing a conviction to oneself'?

To answer this question, consider what impels us to apply our moral convictions in our decisions and actions. We necessarily feel a strong urge, with respect to any of our moral attitudes or convictions, to give it a concrete realization in some action, or in a way of living. This is partly because a moral conviction is inherently a conviction about how to live, or about a proper objective of human endeavour; as such, it demands to be given application in action, or in decision relating to action. In fact, until I manage to convert any mental state of moral certainty into some practical form, to live it out in some way, it remains something purely nominal, lacking full reality.



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But in addition to this pressure towards practical realization emanating from the conviction itself, there is another pressure in the same direction working within the individual as moral agent. For we see our moral attitudes and convictions as central to our individual moral identities, to the sort of persons that we are; and as moral agents, we are necessarily impelled to identify who we are, to confirm where we stand morally. Now being a person in this strong, moral sense of 'person' is a matter not of a formal or nominal subscribing to certain moral convictions but of something deeper, a real and genuine commitment to these convictions. And in fact I can determine my true moral identity, establish myself as having this real commitment, only through my acting-out of the convictions in my life. Merely professing the convictions to myself in foro interno is not adequate in this context as an acknowledge- ment of the values involved; the proper way to affirm a conviction to myself, as part of identifying who I am morally, is to body it forth in action, or at least in a resolve about action. (In this sense we really do hold that a person is what he does-meaning by this the things he does out of conviction.)

Now in this sort of acting-out of a conviction, it is clear that (i) the agent gives some conviction which he (nominally) holds a concrete reality by translating it into a resolve or action, and (ii) this realization makes palpable to the agent himself the genuine- ness of his conviction in a way in which it was not palpable to him before. If in addition (iii) the agent is freely and deliberately acting so as to give his conviction a concrete embodiment, in order to make it manifest as a real conviction to himself, then all three components of what we think of as an act of expressing will be present.

Thus any deliberate bodying-forth of a moral conviction in a chosen line of action, as a professing or acknowledging to oneself of the value or imperative involved, can appropriately be thought of as an expressing to oneself of that conviction. Essentially, what allows the idea of 'expressing to oneself' to get a grip here is the fact that one does not have privileged access to the reality of one's moral convictions, as one does have to one's sensations, or to at least some of one's beliefs. I do have privileged access to my nominal convictions; but I do not know, surely and directly, in a way not open to others, that I genuinely hold a certain moral conviction; rather, like others, I have to depend for such knowledge on the conviction's being concretely realized in action.

(Notice that the pressure to determine what our real moral con-




victions are which is involved here is a moral impulsion, one which is integral to being a moral agent. It is quite distinct from the natural desire we have-linked with our need for self-respect-to reassure ourselves that our supposed convictions represent real commitments, not mere lip-service. An action or decision prompted purely by this desire would hardly even count as evidence of real conviction, and certainly not as an expression of it.)

There are parallels to this sort of expressing-to-oneself in the case of religious belief, and in artistic creation. A religious be- liever's faith 'finds expression' (and this is not really a matter of expression to any other person, not even to God) in a vow, a pilgrimage, or the adoption of a way of life. Again, when an artist sets about composing or creating a work, he has some idea or conception in his mind, which demands to be given a material realization of some kind, and which doesn't have a true reality until it is captured in some material shape. We talk of the artist 'expressing' his original conception in the concrete work; yet it is a familiar point that he may not care whether anyone else under- stands his work, recognizes the thought that it embodies. He is expressing something 'to himself', if to anyone at all. And this does make sense in many cases, because the thought he is trying to capture and articulate is one that is far from clear and firm in his own mind initially; he grasps it clearly only when he has pinned it down by giving it concrete expression. Here again, we extend the concept of expressing in a natural way, applying it to a 'dialogue' which a person conducts with himself, in a situation in which privileged access does not provide him with the usual clear and certain knowledge of the true nature of his state of mind, and he is forced to try to make its nature clear to himself by realizing it in some chosen concrete form.

Reverting to the case of realizing moral convictions in action, we can see that very often condition (iii) above-that the agent deliberately sets out to act out his conviction in some freely-chosen act or resolve-fails to hold. Often a moral conviction does not leave us the freedom to choose when and how to act it out. Indeed, we do not need to cast about for ways of giving it concrete reality in our lives; rather, it has immediate application to life, making clear demands on us in everyday situations, and there is full opportunity for the abstract conviction to be translated into concrete action. In this sort of case we will speak, not of 'expressing' our convictions, but simply of 'living up to them'.



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Equally, however, we often have convictions which do not have as much immediate and compelling application to the stuff of our everyday lives as we feel their importance warrants. In these cases we will feel driven to find or create some way of giving palpable embodiment to the pressing conviction that is within us. It is when we take the initiative in this way, and deliberately perform some action or adopt some rule or practice as a way of acting out the conviction, that we can be 'described as 'expressing' our conviction symbolically. The action or rule will not be one that is in- escapably dictated by the conviction in question, but it will be seen as appropriate to it, naturally though not inevitably flowing from it. Further, in the measure that it costs us something, in effort or commitment, it will serve to express the depth of the conviction. (One reason why words, however eloquent, are quite inadequate to the sort of expressing we are dealing with here is that in most cases they are mere 'paper money', costing us nothing. Where, in contrast, the verbal profession of a conviction is a costly act, involving risk or hardship, it can of course serve appropriately as an expression of real conviction.)

Four further points in amplification of this account. First, if we go back to the case of social rules once more, I think we can identify something at the level of the group similar to an individual's expressing-to-himself of a conviction. A community's identity, as a community of a certain sort, is something that is important- morally important-to its members, and enters into their individual moral identities; so as a community of moral agents, it is under a moral impulsion to express its collective convictions to itself, to identify itself to itself as (say) a community that cares about its weaker members, or a community which values individual conscience. Like the individual, the community can affirm these convictions to itself as real, genuinely-held convictions only by realizing them in a concrete form in its own life as a community, perhaps by adopting some rule or practice. (Think here of the rule 'Women and children first', the Royal Maundy, or the Old Testament rule about the poor man regaining his land in the year of jubilee.')

Secondly, we can see why adopting and sustaining a rule is often a very appropriate way of expressing a moral conviction. For adopting a rule involves a commitment that is both substantial and lasting, and so it can serve very naturally to express a moral con- I Leviticus 25, vv. 25-28.




viction which we feel as something that is both deep and enduring. (There is of course also room for the expression of a conviction in a single costly or demanding action, just as the expression of religious faith may take the form of a single act, rather than the adopting of a lifelong discipline.)

Thirdly, it should now be clear how and why, when we adopt a rule as an expressive symbol, the expressing is an end in itself, and not merely an optional means to some further end. In the case both of expressing to others and of expressing to oneself, the objective is that of making a real conviction manifest (to others, or to oneself), in the only way in which the existence of such a conviction can be made known to anyone, namely through its being realized in action. This objective is of course internal to and definitive of expressing as a kind of activity.

Because expressing is an end in its own right, our attitude to symbolic rules will be unusual. If a rule whose justification is consequentialist is widely disobeyed, it will almost certainly fail (in the long run, at least) to yield the desired effects, and the question will arise whether we should abandon it (or alternatively, if it is a social rule, should strengthen it by making it a law). Where a symbolic rule is not lived up to, in contrast, we may be readier to hang on to it (still as an informal, moral rule), just because it still symbolizes what we aspire to. (We will have to face a different kind of worry about it, however: is it becoming an insincere and hollow expression of conviction?)

Finally, I should mention a basic question about the account offered above, though it is too complex to go into here. Rule- symbolism has been treated so far as something which we freely choose, and is not forced on us at all; the account of expressing convictions to oneself rests on this conception. But might there not be symbolic significance that is inescapable, so that if, e.g., we adopt (or fail to adopt) a certain rule, we must thereby inevitably express a certain attitude? Doctors' dilemmas about treating the incurably ill, for example, may involve a belief in such inescapable symbolism: if they fail to make the uttermost efforts to cure the patient, are they not thereby showing lack of respect for life? Though I cannot deal with the matter here, I would wish to argue that we are never in fact forced to associate a symbolic significance with any act or practice in this way.



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4. Identifying instances of rules which function as expressive symbols

How common is this way of interpreting moral rules? It is very hard to decide about this, for various reasons, some of which have already been mentioned. This way of regarding rules may exist much more widely than we realize, as an implicit and unarticulated conception which people are employing without being clearly aware that they are doing so. One particular reason why people may not recognize that they think of a given rule in symbolic terms is the fact that symbolic apprehension can exist in many forms, and at different levels of awareness, from a very inarticulate conception to a highly reflective one. We can learn a lot about this from phenomenologists, and their exploration of the many sorts of 'meaning' that pervade our experience and thought at different levels; psychologists' study of 'body-language' may also provide relevant examples. Some of these sorts of 'meaning' involve merely acquired associations or natural-sign relationships; but others involve something more complex which, when articulated, may be found to involve one thing's being implicitly treated as a symbol of another.

All this being granted, however, the question still faces us: How (if at all) can we know that someone is implicitly thinking of a rule as a symbol, even though he or she would not or could not give an account of his thinking in these terms? I have no systematic answer to this question: but let me mention (i) one sort of moral thinking which I think we can firmly say must be symbolic, and (ii) some other cases where the thinking involved can be plausibly explained as involving a symbolic interpretation, though it may also admit of other explanations.

(i) When someone associates having a certain rule with 'showing respect for' something, I suggest, he is (explicitly or implicitly) treating the rule as having a symbolic function. To respect some person or thing, in the sense of having an attitude of respect for him, her, or it, is to regard the person or thing as important in some way; and showing this respect is expressing this value- conviction-deliberately making the conviction manifest or evi- dent. It is clear that thinking of a rule as a way of 'showing respect for X' is different from thinking of it as connected with X in a consequential, non-symbolic way; e.g., if I regard our having a certain social rule as justified by its maximizing human happiness overall, I won't talk about it as a 'way of showing respect for human




happiness'. Also, what we do by way of 'showing respect for X' may be something very different from trying to maximize the occurrence of X, or letting X have free rein: respecting individual conscience, for example, need not entail allowing individuals to follow their conscience without check, but will rather come out in the ways in which we choose to try to divert them from con- scientious courses of action which we see as wrong. Given, then, that this way of conceiving a rule is not consequentialist, and that it incorporates the notion of 'showing' an attitude, it seems clear that it must be a case of conceiving of a rule as an expressive symbol. And if this is so, then whenever we think of moral rules or practices as grounded in respect for human life, or respect for individual conscience, or respect for persons-and we do very commonly think in these terms-we are thinking of these rules and practices as symbols.

(ii) Turn now to the cases which are naturally but not inescap- ably explicable in symbolic terms.

(iia) I would suggest that at least in some of the cases where we recognize a general kind of duty which is not binding on us in any one specific case-a 'duty of imperfect obligation', as it used to be called-the duty may be seen in this way because the call to perform the kind of act in question is really a call to express a certain value-conviction. E.g., I may decide that though I don't have a duty to help any and every person I know of who is in need (perhaps because the consequences of pursuing this policy con- sistently would not be good in the end), it is a good thing if people do spontaneously help others. This conviction, like any other, demands application in my living; it does not require me to perform this particular act, or that one, but it does call for some actions, actions of my own choosing, as expression of my conviction. Hence, not implausibly, my imperfect duty of benevolence to others.

(iib) A more specific case is perhaps our thinking about distributive justice. John Rawls' account of distributive justice,' in terms of what social arrangements we would choose if we were deliberating behind a veil of ignorance, may or may not correctly elucidate what principles of distributive justice we will naturally assent to; but given that we are in fact not behind that veil, there is still a question as to why any such principles win assent from

John Rawls, A Theory of justice (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1971).



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certain people, namely those whose actual position in society gives them a self-interested reason not to subscribe to such principles. One possible explanation might be this: they see principles of this sort as constituting the most natural symbolic expression of a communal conviction that each individual is of equal moral importance. (This might explain why quite different specific principles of distributive justice may be recognized by different com- munities, or even by different individuals.)

(iic) Another specific case is a common attitude to promises. It is clear that many people do not assess the morality of keeping or breaking a promise in purely consequential terms, even if we in- clude as relevant consequences effects upon the practice of prom- ising, upon others' attitudes to promises, and upon the promiser's own future attitude. The person who would keep a secret, death- bed promise despite the better overall consequences that would flow from breaking it-or equally, the person who would break it only reluctantly and with an uneasy conscience-cannot (if he is rational) be assessing the situation purely in terms of consequences; and it may be that he feels forced to see promises like this because he sees, or implicitly sees, the rule 'Let your word be your bond' as a symbolic rule, expressing respect for others as free, respons- ible agents who should not be manipulated into false assurance by deceiving promises.

Of these four cases, only (i) has to be explained in terms of symbolic thinking; alternative explanations may be possible in each of the cases (iia)-(iic). And, as we noticed earlier, the same rule may be regarded by one person as functioning symbolically, while another sees having the rule as a way of attaining some desirable end, and a third may attribute both a symbolic and a means- to-end function to the rule. To complicate matters further, where the two kinds of rationale are combined in an individual's or a community's thinking, it may be impossible to say which one is more basic or carries more weight; the two may be inextricably intertwined, with one mode of functioning presupposing or being reinforced by the other.

5. How important is the symbolic way of thinking about rules?

Particularly in the light of all this uncertainty, how much attention should we pay to the symbolic conception of moral rules? It might be claimed that it is not very important, in that social morality



MORAL RULES AS EXPRESSIVE SYMBOLS 24I

today contains much less in the way of symbolic rules that it did in earlier cultures, or even at earlier stages in our own culture, and is now shaped largely by utilitarian principles.

It is true that in recent generations there has been a movement in morality rather like the movement in the Reformation, away from the representing of non-material realities by material images or rituals. Today, we make much less use of rules of polite behaviour, dress, sexual mores, and so on, as concrete symbols of the moral verities we communally subscribe to. However, the examples cited earlier do seem to indicate that symbolic elements still figure as live and central components in our social morality. And in any case, against any decline in the symbolic component in social morality there must be set the increasing importance accorded today to individual morality-to personal principles and ideals; and this-especially the supererogatory morality of ideals-clearly involves symbolic thinking to a very substantial degree.

A different line of attack might be on the moral propriety of symbolic rules. The tendency to erect rules as symbolic expressions of attitudes, it might be claimed, is inherently bad, a self-indulgent and sentimental way of living the moral life, and one which often has very harmful consequences. We should notice this way of thinking in morals only to deplore it, and hope that people will grow out of it.

Certainly it is true that the happiness and development of individuals can all too readily be sacrificed on the altar of a communal or personal symbolic rule. We need to apply ourselves to the task of first identifying our symbolic rules, and then vetting their appropriateness carefully in terms of their value as symbols and the consequences that actually flow from our having them. But saying this just adds urgency to the unanswered questions: How in general do we justify maintaining rules as symbols? How do we assess the moral worth of a particular symbolic rule, and balance this worth against undesirable consequences?

To answer these questions properly, we would need to have a full grasp of what is involved in being a moral agent, and in responding to the demands of one's moral convictions. I cannot attempt to provide this, and must be content to point to the hints in section 3, in discussing the expressing of convictions to oneself. Nor can I identify any principles which either do or should guide us in weighing the symbolic value of a rule against its consequential demerits.



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Even without the backing of such a systematic understanding, however, we can surely still confidently affirm the importance which symbolism has for the moral life-as it has for every other part of our lives. Symbolic rules, both social and personal, play a vital role in giving our lives shape, significance and purpose; they lie at the heart of our relationships with one another; they matter enormously for our development and happiness as persons. It seems completely implausible to suggest that they are not cor- respondingly important for us as moral agents-that we could fully realize our moral nature without them.

(Incidentally, when symbolic rules do promote human happiness, this often depends essentially on their being thought of as existing for other reasons, such as the expressing of convictions. A strictly rule-utilitarian ethic, which allowed no place for symbolic rules, could not countenance human happiness being increased in this back-handed way. In yet another sense, the more we aim exclusively at the promotion of human happiness, the less likely we are to hit the mark.)

However hard it is to assess the value of symbolic rules, then, they are important; and this way of conceiving a moral rule does merit our attention. As I have depicted it, our thinking about moral rules is a complex tangle of different strands, which we may not be able to separate out into a tidy and ordered pattern. What is important is that in trying to understand others' moral thinking, and in discussing moral issues with them, we should always be alive to the possibility that there may be an element of symbolic thinking shaping their-and perhaps our own-views and attitudes.'

UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN

I should like to thank Mr. Ian Fowlie, Mr. A. J. Ellis and Mr. David Bastow for comments which influenced the paper's present form.



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