그럼 군대 다녀온 나는 비양심적이란 말이냐?: ‘양심적 병역거부’라는 용어의 적절성과 개념공학(conceptual engineering)

In 2018, the Korean judiciary broke up with the past practice of punishing conscientious objectors under Article 88 of the Military Service Act, paving the way for them to legally fulfill the military duty through alternative services. However, such a dramatic about-face caused a great row. Among the issues, the most prominent was about the complaint that “If conscientious objectors are said to conscientiously refuse to serve in the military, does this mean that those who faithfully fulfill their military duty are unconscientious?” Some people lamented that the term ‘conscientious objection to military service’ consequently glorifies conscientious objection. The defense ministry sensed the seriousness of this issue and announced that they would use the term ‘objection to military service based on religious beliefs and others’ instead of ‘conscientious objection to military service’ when discussing alternative services. The purpose of this paper is to engage in this debate and to draw the most reasonable conclusion by relying on the resources from philosophy. I understand that the debate about the term ‘conscientious objection to military service’ is not a debate about linguistic expressions but about concepts. The question is what the concept of conscience is and whether it properly captures the so-called conscientious objection. And this leads us to a more fundamental question of what it is to analyze a concept. At this juncture I will introduce an emerging field of philosophy called ‘conceptual engineering’ and clarify the relationship between the commonsensical concept of conscience possessed by the general public and the concept of conscience adopted by the court (most detailed by the Constitutional Court’s sentence letter on a case of conscientious objection in 2018). I will heavily rely on Sally Haslanger’s work on concept in particular. Put in her terms, my key thesis is that the analysis of the concept of conscience performed by the Constitutional Court should not be interpreted as a ‘conceptual analysis’ of the concept of conscience, but as an ‘ameliorative analysis’ that is meant to articulate what the concept of conscience must be like. That is to say that it is not an analysis of the existing concept of conscience but an analysis of the concept of conscience that we ought to create to facilitate our thinking about moral psychology. If my interpretation is correct, the most reasonable solution to the debate about the term ‘conscientious objection to military service’ should be to keep the term and dispel the public misunderstanding related to the concept of conscience. This is where the defense ministry’s imprudent move to discard the term ‘conscientious objection to military service’ and replace it with the expression ‘objection to military service based on religious beliefs and others’ is open to severe criticism.