Conscience as behaviour developed through social interaction
(5) According to…
- Defined six stages of moral development in three levels
* pre-conventional
* conventional
* post-conventional - The final stage is an individualised conscience where moral decisions are consistent and universalisable
- Kohlberg stressed the development of conscience through encountering dilemmas
- Such processes of moral decision making are all worked out in social contexts
- Social explanations recieve criticism from those who see conscience as a moral intuition, rather than reasoning
Lawrence Kohlberg
Conscience as an aspect of the super-ego
(8) According to…
- The super fo is the controlling restraining self
- it controlls impulses that are potentially damaging to society
- This is the repository of parental authority, so it judges and threatens punishment
- The feeling of threat is the conscience
- To go against the super ego brings about feelings of shame, remorse and guilt
- If Freud is right, the conscience cannot be seen as a source of moral authority as it is just the internalisation of our parents wishes
- it also has nothing to do with God, unless god is viewed as an ultimate authority figure
- Freud does not see the conscience as having anything to do with morality
Sigmund Freud
Conscience as sanctions or social conditioning
(4) According to…
- Specifically the sanctions or social conditioning that the group comes to bear on the individual
- Reinforced by the figure of God as a ‘projection’ of society’s powers, whose moral authority we feel compelled to obey
- Societies work through a collective conscience, an act is bad or wrong if society disproves of it
- These ideas recieve support from evolutionary accounts of the conscience, according to which, conscience is a survival mechanism as societies feel a shared sense of responsibility
Emile Durkheim
Conscience as the authoritarian and the humanistic conscience
(4) According to…
- Conscience is associated with guilt, shame and fear
- Sense of moral responsibility out of a fear of being rejected by a society based on obedience to rules and conformity to norms
- Fromm further argues that we have a humanistic conscience that arises out of our instinctive knowledge of what destroys life and what makes it flourish
- This can make a person (rightly) disobey society to bring about flourishing
Erich Fromm
Evaluate social and psychological views of the conscience
(3)
- They have good explanatory power
- Groups improve their survivability by individuals having a consciencethat compells them to maintain group loyalty
- The authority of parents and society are powerful tools to compel social obedience
Conscience as the innate voice of God
(7) According to Augustine
- Conscience is innate, put into human minds by God and therefore ammounts to innate knowledge of God’s moreal laws
- Closely follows Paul’s arguments in Romans 2 where he describes it as a ‘witness to the requirements of the law’
- Augustine seems to have seen conscience as the literal voice of God
Limitations to Augustine’s view - the amount of evil in the world could suggest that Aquinas speaks to people selectively, or they are good at ignoring his voice
- It makes ethical decision redundant as all one must do is listen to the voice
- This means we cannot be morally free, yet freedom is the essence of being morally good.
- Christians have disagreed on morality, both claiming God-given conscience.
Conscience as the innate voice of God
(4) According to Schleirmacher
- Conscience is the voice of God/ direct revelation from God
- To go against it is a sin, it takes priority over everything else, to react in any other way is to hinder your life
Weaknesses - What if you are not hearing the voice of god but are being psychologically deluded?
- There are many who claim divine inspiration for committing barbaric acts
Conscience as the God-given faculty of reason
(6) According to…
- Aquinas begins with the synderesis rule ‘Good should be done and evil avoided’ which is implemented through Natural Law
- God given reason is innate
- Conscience is the application of that reason to specific situations, guided by synderesis
- This can never be mistaken but conscience can make mistakes through faulty understanding or application
- Conscience is binding because what the conscience dictates is true to the individual concerned and God’s truth must be followed
- Aquinas’ views are flawless in their logic but whether they are correct depends on the validity of synderesis and Natural Law.
St Thomas Aquinas
Synderesis: In Aquinas’ system, synderesis is in the rational part of human agents - a natural disposition of the human mind by which we apprehend withour inquiry the basic principles of human behaviour.
Conscience as a God-given faculty - intuitive, reflective and autonomous
(8) according to…
- Conscience is a reflective principle that works as an autonomous judge
- Butler believes conscience is in human nature, a reflective principle placed within us as a natural guide and ‘proper governor’ it is our duty to follow it
- Acts as a judge between human prudence [egoism] and benevolence [altruism]
- Works intuitively and autonomously, as it is God-given, it must be followed
- However, its operation is secular and autonomous
- Moral dilemmas happen when there is a conflict between our emotions, desires and moral principles
- Following conscience is a good way of ensuring that we have the balance right
- Elizabeth Anscome points out that Butler assumes that God’s directions will always be good, he doesn’t consider the possibility that it will be distorted or evil.
Bishop Butler
Conscience is agape-love making decisions situationally
Accoerding to…
- Conscience is not a review officer judging what you have done
- It is prospective not retrospective
- Choosing what love demands in the present situation
- The conscience is not a noun but a verb. It is what we do when making a moral decision
- For Fletcher, conscience is the application of reason, to a situation, informed by agape
Joseph Fletcher
Aquinas’ view of conscience as applied to breaking promises/ telling lies
(4)
- Aquinas’ conscience would tell the individual that telling lies/ breaking promises is not rational as it conflicts with synderesis
- Also violates the primary precept of living in an ordered society
- In the mad axe-murderer situation, Aquinas would say that one may tell an evasive truth
- Many see this as too rigid as it would as allowing the death of a victim is worse than lying in order to save them
synderesis: to seek good and avoid evil
Sociological conscience applied to breaking promises/ telling lies
(3)
- Telling lies/ breaking promises seen as socially destructive
- Fromm’s idea of the authoritarian conscience, an individual would not break a promise out of fear of societal disapproval
- Humanistic conscience would inform the individual that telling lies/ breaking promises would violate the ethical norms that society needs to be fruitful
Psychological conscience applied to breaking promises/ telling lies
(4)
- Freudian analysis would begin with the arrival of guilt from the subconscious mind of one who has told a lie/ broken a promise
- This would be the product of parental or societal conditioning
- Telling lies/ breaking promises is very normal in modern society, Freud would argue that this is because parents may have viewed them as acceptable
- Little or no sense of the conscience treating this as a moral issue
Aquinas’ views on conscience applied to adultery
(3)
- Reason and conscience dictates that adultery is wrong, but the conscience is not infallible
Aquinas’ example: - A man who commits adultery through ignorance of the Divine Law is evil, because he should know God’s law
- If he commits adultery through mistaken reason his will is excused from being evil
Fletcher’s view on conscience applied to adultery
(3)
- Fletcher presents a case study on ‘sacrificial adultery’ (a woman gets pregnant in order to escape prison and return to her family
- This suggests that the conscience can permit adultery in specific situations
- Marriage is a promise and so the answer is the same as in the case of breaking promises
Sociological views on conscience applied to adultery
(5)
- Sociology generally views religion as a social phenomenon
- Society might disapprove of adultery and show its disapproval by telling people that God condemns it
- In Durkheim’s view, an act is bad simply because society disapproves of it
- Therefore, the morality of adultery is dependant on the general view at the time
- It is now more of a reason to terminate the marriage contract, the only morality is that of keeping or breaking a contract
The value of conscience as the voice of God
(3)
This type of conscience may not be valuable if
* there is no way of knowing that what you are hearing is the voice of god
* there are conflicting messages coming to people who all believe that God is speaking to them
This type of conscience is both subjective and unreliable
The value of conscience as internalised values of society
(3)
- Conscience naturally unites society over shared values
- But if a society views another society’s morals as evil, then there will be antagonism between them
- Furthermore, if the role of conscience is to challenge existing values then the collective conscience presented by some has no value
The value of Kohlberg’s individualised conscience
(2)
- The demand that moral decisions fhould be consistent and universalisable gives a rational view
- however, it is dependant on whether the individual is capable of such level of thought
The value of reason in conscience
(3)
- Key problem is that reason is not infallible as it may not know all the relevant facts
- Aquinas admits that conscience is influenced by passions and social conditioning so it can lead to harmful acts
- We need to be able to judge what reason is telling us by some higher standard
Feelings of guilt, are they useful?
(3)
- Guilt may motivate us to change our behaviour but this is only good if it is positive
- We may be motivated to change something we do not need to change
- Someone may feel guilty for being homosexual but this may not reflect their true beliefs on the morality of homosexuality
Can conscience guide at all?
(2)
- This depends on whether one takes a determinist or liberalist view on free will.
- Conscience can only guide if a person is truly free
The subjectivity of conscience
(3)
- Only you know what your concscience is telling you to do
- If you do something others disapprove of they don’t know whether you were following your conscience or not
- If you use your conscience to justify your actions then it means nothing to anybody else
The problem of defining conscience
(7)
A useful definition needs to include:
* reason, moral views shouldn’t be irrational
* social value
* the ability to criticise societal norms
* some relation to religious values
* an alternative source of values for those who are not religious
* a recognition of human psychology and instincts
For most, conscience involves one or all of these factors but it is unquantifiable and untestable so we cannot know which view of the conscience is correct.
