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.Undertaking a risky rescue, for example, is often heroic, beyond the call of duty, not morally required.Moral rights have a role here in protecting us against interference with our decisions not to be heroic, not to be charitable, not to be kind, and so forth.These choices have moral importance, and moral rights, on both the protected-permission and the protected-choice views, have an indispensable function in protecting them from interference.But because moral rights are at work on both conceptions, there is, so far, no good reason to prefer one over the other.The Function of Rights: Recognitional,or Reaction-Constraining?One function that the protected-permission conception serves is what we could refer to as a recognitional function of rights.Attributions of rights often serve as a way of recognizing the worth of individuals or groups.For example, homosexuals campaign for gay rights as a way of persuading society generally to recognize that the lives they lead are not despicable or inferior.In other words, gay rights are not meant to be understood as a “right to do wrong,” but as a right to do what a majority has traditionally, but mistakenly, thought to be wrong.By the same token, those who resist recognition of gay rights often do so on the ground that recognition would implicitly carry with it a removal of the stigma attached to morally wrongful conduct.The protected-permission conception captures this feature of the debate about gay rights; on both sides of the issue, it tends to be assumed that recognizing a moral right involves withdrawing the stigma of wrongfulness from the exercise of the right.140The Second Expansionary EraOn the protected-choice conception, in contrast, recognition of a moral right to engage in homosexual acts does not entail the moral permissibility of doing so.Doing so may be condemned as wrong, consistently with affirming the moral right.But the assignment of moral rights may have a function other than a recognitional one.Sometimes, the language of rights is used in a way that seems intended to withhold approval of the exercise of the right.Think again of the cases of the stingy lottery winner or the hectoring athlete.We may be uncertain whether to condemn their conduct as wrongful even though we are convinced that interference with it would be wrongful.Often it is more important to reach a conclusion about the moral permissibility of interference than it is to decide finally about the moral value of the conduct that would be interfered with.This is how many people view abortion: abortion may or may not be wrong, on this view, but interfering with a woman’s right to elect an abortion is certainly wrong.Invoking a woman’s moral right to choose to abort is intended here to forestall or “bracket” discussion of the issue of the wrongness of abortion, and to isolate and focus on the issue of the wrongness of interference.Here, invoking a moral right is intended to serve a reaction-constraining function.The reaction-constraining function of moral rights may have a superficial appeal for those who view morality skeptically.Since we can never hope to sort out essentially subjective matters of right and wrong, why not set those aside and focus instead on the rightness and wrongness of interference? The problem with this is how to disentangle the issue of the rightness and wrongness of interference from the (supposedly subjective) issue of the rightness and wrongness of the conduct that is the candidate for being interfered with.This is not to say that the recognitional function is any better off, for, of course, any attempt to establish moral rights that recognize the worth of a conduct of a certain type will also have to confront the epistemological difficulties we have already noted that cast doubt on the possibility of moral objectivity and truth.Choosing between the protected-permission conception of moral rights and the protected-choice conception seems to come down, then, to a choice between a conception that serves a recognitional purpose and one that, instead, serves a reaction-constraining purpose.To the extent that moral rights are thought important because they vindicate certain ways of living, the recognitional function will be valued.But to A Right to Do Wrong? Two Conceptions of Moral Rights 141the extent that moral rights are thought important as ways of creating“breathing space” for choice in a world of moral uncertainty and controversy, the reaction-constraining function will be valued.It is of course logically possible to maintain that both functions are important, and to divide the world of moral rights according to which of the two functions predominates.Where the recognitional function is more important, the protected-permission conception will apply, and the issue of the rightness, innocence, or wrongness of a category of conduct will be in play.And where the reaction-constraining function is more important, the protected-choice conception will apply, and the issue of the rightness, innocence, or wrongness of the underlying category of conduct will be bracketed – “off the table,” so to speak.Unfortunately, perhaps, no such division is likely to be agreed to by parties who are at loggerheads about the wrongness of the underlying conduct.Some within the “pro-choice” camp on the abortion issue will argue that the right of a woman to choose to abort does not have a recognitional point, but a reaction-constraining one.Others within that camp will disagree and will, in that respect only, agree with the “pro-life”camp that a recognitional point is inseparable from a moral right to abort.Many gay-rights advocates are unsatisfied with any right to intimacy that is merely reaction-constraining; what they demand is recognition of the moral innocence – more, the positive moral worth – of a way of life.Their opponents agree with them on this, if little else, but many of their sympathizers may feel that a moral right that constrains reaction is all that they should claim.The two conceptions, and the divergent functions they serve, come up in disputes about “positive” rights as well.My right to an easy rescue seems to serve the recognitional function of vindicating the value of my life [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]