Thinking and Deciding

414 MORAL JUDGMENT AND CHOICE
If they are moral opinions and not values, then we can safely ignore them in
making our own utilitarian calculation about what to do. How do we distinguish values
from opinions? In theory, people could ask themselves how they would evaluate
states of affairs, if it were impossible to affect these states. These are values rather
than intuitions about action, because no action is involved. The states could include
other people’s actions, however. Very likely, the prude who opposes nudity will think
that it is bad when other people go naked, whether the people who do it think it is bad
or not. This is a value. The prude will also support legislation banning the practice.
The latter is an opinion about action. We separate these two components of attitude.
In practice, this separattion is difficult, at best. But we must make it when we think
theoretically about these issues.
When moralistic opinions are values, they do not necessarily win. We must count
the harm we do to people who hold these values when we ignore the values. This
harm is not necessarily greater than the harm caused to others when we pay attention
to these values. The harm suffered by the prude when people go naked may be
less than the harm suffered by those who cannot go naked because the prude has
gotten a law passed banning nudity. Sometimes, though, moralistic values may tip
the balance. For example, in Islamic countries, enough people may hold these values
so that the affront to them may count more than the harm done to women who must
cover themselves in public (and to the men who might otherwise wish to see women
less covered). Is this right?
From a utilitarian point of view, it seems difficult to find a good reason to ignore
these moralistic values (Hare, 1963, 1981). So we must count them. There are
problems in how much to count them. People who hold these values often say that
they are absolute, more important than anything. If that were true, we should not
violate them at any cost, unless the values of those who were harmed were just as
absolute. Let us assume that we can resolve this problem. But I will not try to resolve
it here.
On the other hand, we might well try to discourage people from having values
that lead to behavior that is harmful to the values of others. Moralistic values are of
this sort. One way to discourage such values is to ignore them.
Another possibility is that some of these values are actually means values (sec. 14).
These values are held because people believe they are means to the achievement of
something else, such as the good society. One way to deal with these values is to increase
the level of public discussion about the beliefs in question. Does nudity really
lead to other, clearer, kinds of immorality? It may be too late to affect people who
are committed to one side or the other of such questions. In the long run, though,
people may respond to evidence, whichever side it is on.
To the extent to which we are sure that people are acting on the basis of false
beliefs about the relation between their expressed values to their fundamental values,
we might try to satisfy their fundamental values when we, as citizens, create public
policy.