Conscience

• Conscience

  • Conscience implies the ability to recognise natural laws and choose to follow them appropriately.
  • Conscience is a moral faculty; it is a sense of feeling which compels individuals to believe that particular activities are morally right or wrong.
  • There are two main views about conscience:

  1. Religious views ie. divine command theory.
  2. Secular views - including psychological and humanitarian approaches.
• Augustine

  • Conscience is the innate voice of God and that we need Gods grace in addition to our conscience to be saved.
  • It is placed in the mind by God.
  • Our conscience informs us and is infallible in what it tells us about right and wrong.
  • Our conscience is our authoritative and moral guide.
  • God knows the choices behind our actions.
  • Hiding your actions and being unwilling to confess them to God leads to further distance.
  • Conscience is God’s love poured forth to human beings.
• Evaluation of Augustine

  • Depends on belief in God.
  • Amount of moral evil in the world suggests that not everybody hears the voice of God within them.
  • Different people have different ideas of what is 'good', we don't all agree on different moral issues.
  • This undermines the idea that there is 1 innate voice which everybody is hearing.
  • Compromises free will.
• Butler

  • Conscience is a reflective principle placed within us by God as a natural guide and governor. It is a reflected sense of right and wrong. It is our duty to follow it.
  • Allows us to reflect on what we have done in the past and what we will do in the future.
  • Conscience is based on 2 governing principles of human

  1. Prudence - our natural love of self
  2. Benevolence - our natural love of others.

  • Butler believes conscience is about balancing these 2 things.
  • Conscience makes intuitive moral judgements that have absolute authority over our actions, we should not consider alternatives.
• Evaluation of Butler


  Strengths

  • Makes us more responsible for our actions. We have beeb gifted the ability to reflect on our actions by God.
  • This reflects free will and means we can be held accountable for our actions.

  Criticisms

  • Some people don't have a balance between prudence and benevolence ie. they are selfish.
  • Moral evil suggests that not everybody as this inner reflective principle.
• Fletcher

  • Sees conscience as a verb.
  • It is not something that we have (ie. intuition, voice of God, upbringing, reason) but is something that we do.
  • Conscience is the weighing up of the possible decision before it is taken.
  • Conscience is a label that we give to our attempts to decide what is the most loving thing to do.
• Evaluation of Fletcher

  Strengths

  • Resolves the problem of conscience not being a physical feature of the brain by explaining it as a thing we do, rather something we have.
  • Shows why different people make different moral decisions.

  Criticisms

  • Depends on belief in God.
  • Contradicts Christian understanding of the conscience as a faculty we have been given by God.
• Fromm

  • Originally considered conscience to be authoritarian, derived from the fear of displeasing authority which led to guilt, causing greater submission to authority.
  • Developed out of fear of being rejected by society. Guilt is the result of feeling disobedient.
  • People don't think for themselves but are driven by a fear of disobeying orders.
  • Fromm later considered the superego to give us humanistic conscience which comes from within. This is driven by individual standards not fear of external authority.
  • Conscience is a struggle between authoritarian and humanistic conscience.
• Evaluation of Fromm

  • Takes into account the social influences on human beings.
  • Consistent with Freud's understanding of consciences as a source of guilt.
  • More optimistic than Freud as he references to humanistic conscience rather than just internalised voices of authority figures.
  • Doesn't depend on belief in God.
• Jean Piaget

  • Argued that we don’t develop the ability to think abstractly, which includes thinking about morality, until the age of 11.
  • Until the age of 11, we must rely on other to tells us the right thing to do. 
  • 11 and unders do not have the ability to think the consequences through themselves.
• Aquinas' theological approach

  • Conscience is not a voice of God, but a 'rational power'.
  • It is the God given faculty of reason. It is a natural ability to understand the difference between right and wrong.
  • Ratio is the reason placed in every person as a result of being created in the image of God.
  • Humans are not born inherently knowing what is right and wrong.
  • The starting point for Aquinas was the syneresis principle.
• Aquinas' synderesis principle

  • 'Good should be pursued and evil should be avoided'. This governs all human reasoning.
  • Synderesis is a rational part of a humans agent.
  • Everyone aims to to good by using our reason.
  • Synderesis is defined as our constant repetition of the use of right reason.
  • When we are born, we have no syneresis, but as we grow up and practise reason continuously, we gradually come to know what is good.
  • It is an intellectual process of gaining knowledge given to us by God.
• Aquinas - conscienta

  • Natural ability to distinguish between right and wrong and making appropriate decisions.
  • This is the application of synderesis to ethical issues and real life problems.
  • Aquinas says it is always right to apply moral principles to each situation as best you can.
  • Conscienta is the name given to the intellectual process of forming our particular moral judgements in individual circumstances.
• Aquinas - conscience is capable of error

  • Actions of conscience are not always correct, if our principles are flawed, our conscience is also flawed.
  • Conscience is fallible and can be mistaken. The is because it is not the innate voice of God speaking to you, instead it is a gift/skill that God has hgiven you so ultimately it is you doing the thinking and making the decisions.
  • Despite it being fallible, the conscience should always be followed.
  • This is because it is the best moral guide that we have got.
• Vincible and invincible ignorance - Aquinas

  • For Aquinas, a responsibility informed action is not blameworthy, even though it may be wrong.
  • A person can honestly to the wrong thing while believing it is the right thing.
  • Vincible ignorance - ignorance which I am responsible. There is no excuse.
  • Invincible ignorance - a lack of knowledge which I cannot be held responsible for. ie. those who have never hear of Christianity because they live in countries where the knowledges is unavailable to them. They cannot be blamed for this.
• Strengths of Aquinas

  • Realistic as it considers the conscience is not infallible. It is something we use and often make mistakes ie. following apparent goods.
  • Emphasis on reason safeguards human free will - reason allows us to make freely chosen moral decisions.
  • Highly influential view supported by the Catholic Church.
• Weaknesses of Aquinas

  • Depends on belief in God.
  • Aquinas assumes that we all act according to the synderesis principle. Observation of the world suggests not everybody does.
  • Doesn't take into account that different societies may have different moral laws and as a result the conscience may vary.
  • Assumes conscience is grounded by natural law. The fundamental understanding of nature that this theory is based on is no longer consistent with a modern understanding of how nature works.
  • Assumes no emotion is expressed.
• Freud

  • Conscience is the internalised voice of authority figures ie. parents, and is experienced as a feeling of guilt when we go against our conscience.
  • It is the product if psychological factors that influence humans in a way that may or may not be healthy.
  • Conscience is the functional part of the superego - it is the part that judges and threatens us with punishment.
  • The content of our conscience is shaped by our experiences.
  • It is culturally dependant; this is why different societies have different moral codes.
• Freuds concept of the mind

  The mind is made up of:

  • The unconscious mind: repressed thoughts and feelings ie. desires, wish fulfilment, pleasure, dreams of gratification.
  • Preconscious mind: memories not readily available or accessible.
  • Conscious mind: thoughts a person currently had, which the unconscious mind cannot access.
• The id

  • Driven by pleasure and seeks immediate gratification. Causes anxiety/stress is desires are not gratified. It is impulsive.
  • ie. the desire for food to satisfy hunger drives infants to cry.
  • It operates on the 'pleasure principle' where wishful impulses should be satisfied.
  • 'Dark inaccessible part of our personality'
• The ego

  • It is not socially acceptable to seek immediate gratification.
  • Children are taught by their parents what is and isn't socially acceptable.
  • The ego is the mediation between the id and social norms.
  • Relationship between the id and ego:
  • The rider (ego) manages and guides the horse (id). The best the ego can do is stay on the horse, pointing it in the right direction and claiming some credit at the end as if the action were its own.
  • 'That part of the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world'.
• The superego

  • The internalised standards of right and wrong which children acquire from their family and society.
  • Authority figures in our childhood establish rules. Fulfilling these leads to a sense of pride but failure to live up to these rules leads to punishment and guilt.
  • 'Judges it and threatens it with punishment'.
• Freuds psychosexual development stages

  • Each stage is associated with a particular part of the bodies the libido (sexual desire) focuses on the part of the body as a source of pleasure and frustration.
  • Oral (0-1) concerned with sucking and swallowing.
  • Anal (1-3) concerned with withholding and expelling (potty training)
  • Phallic (3-6) concerned with masturbation.
  • Latency (6 to puberty) concerned with the absence of sexual motivation.
  • Genital (puberty to adulthood) concerned with sexual intercourse.
• Oedipus complex

  • Explains that in a young boys pre-sexual development he develops a fixation for his mother and views his father as an obstacle for fulfilment of these desires.
  • The child both fears and is jealous of his father. He sees him as a rival.
  • This creates anxiety and the repressed fear that is father will castrate him.
  • The complex is solved when the boys superego is formed.
• Strenghs of Freud

  • Gives insight into the origins of guilt, a powerful feeling many people experience in their lives daily.
  • Takes into account the social influences on our conscience ie. parents.
  • Provides an explanation for the conscience that doesn't depend on God.
  • People do seem to have some sort of innate sense of right and wrong as all society sees things like murder as wrong.
  • Conscience does seem to require an element of decision making and is not something to be followed blindly.
• Weaknesses of Freud

  • Reduces the conscience to a need for conformity.
  • Contradicts the idea that conscience is from God.
  • Conscience which comes from parents is only as good as those parents, there is no compelling reason to follow it.
  • Implies little freewill over morals if inbuilt by parents.
  • Causes for questioning of whether parents should be held responsible if children are immoral or break the law.
• Karl Popper

  • Accused Freuds work of being pseudo-scientific, meaning it is not really scientific at all.
  • He notes that scientific claims have the ability to be proved wrong if they are false.
  • By basing his ideas in the unconscious and suggesting that things are only revealed in psychoanalysis. Freuds theory is unfalsifiable, and this is not proper science.
  • A feature of a scientific theory os that it is able to be falsified. There is no way to falsify an appeal to the unconscious.
• • The relationship of mind and action is extraordinary in human beings and is not easily reducible to simple terms.
  • The process of deciding to act is complex.
  • We often wonder about whether an action should be done.
  • The idea of 'should be done' has an ethical quality as the morally right and proper thing to do.
  • Conscience has reference with past events and a connection with future possible actions.
• Conscience simply means 'with knowledge'
• Aquinas - practica ratio

  • This is the use of reason in practice.
  • It entails not merely being able to know what should be done, but also the practical way of thinking through how it should be done.
  • The moral life is a practical life. We have to work out carefully what is right and proper to do.
  • We must also use the intellectual virtue of prudence. This involves 3 intellectual skills.
  • Understanding, judgement, good deliberation.