Conscience Flashcards

Question

aquinas negatives - plato

Answer 1

• Plato would argue against Aquinas’ view that invincible ignorance makes an act non-punishable since he argued that ignorance was always a reason for blame.

Answer 2

• Does the conscience work to give hope, joy and love? Michel Foucault argued that the conscience acts to condemn the individual and not to liberate.

Answer 3

Dawkins: conscience is a biological process which has come as a by-product of the evolutionary process’ creation of morals.

Answer 4

- Founded psychoanalytic school of psychology - Assertion: sexual desire and pleasure are driving force of life. - Conscience is part of the unconscious mind, arises as a result of bad experiences in early life/disapproval from parents or society. (Contrast to Aquinas – who claims we are very aware of our conscience) - All about guilt (unlike Aquinas) – influences you to behave in a certain way

Answer 5

o Oedipus ♣ Mythical Oedipus, King of Thebes, is prophesied that he will kill his father and sleep with his mother ♣ Freud develops on Oedipus’ themes of unconsciousness and forbidden desires o Primal Horde ♣ A tribal group dominate by the Old Man, exercised total control over the females ♣ Men could not relieve sexual urges, became frustrated ♣ Worked together to kill and eat the Old Man ♣ Disputes broke out over the women, started to feel regret at killing the Old Man ♣ They felt the guilt of having given into their urges (id) as well as the disapproval of society (superego)

Answer 6

id ego super ego

Answer 7

o Id – instinctive drive dominated by pleasure ♣ Unconscious – it is the impulsive part of our psyche which responds to instincts ♣ Eros (sexual) part of personality is in the id and within this there is the libido (sex drive and life energy that motivates) ♣ ‘I need and I want…’ ♣ Id is the biological force that every organism is born with ♣ Operates with the ‘pleasure principle’, not just sexual pleasure ♣ New-born is almost completely id, almost every action is based on unconscious behaviour e.g. crying

Answer 8

o Ego – conscious structure that mediates/moderates the forces of the id, organised and more realistic part of the mind e.g. the demands of society ♣ ‘How do I…?’ ♣ Ego operates according to the ‘reality principle’, tries to find acceptable ways of meeting the needs presented by the id (mediation according to social expectation) ♣ Connected with the conscious, works to keep the id under control ♣ Ego rules with common sense and reason e.g. uses planning/memory to make sure that food is safe to eat rather than instinctively eating it as the id would

Answer 9

o Super-ego – internalises and reflects anger and disapproval of others ♣ Unconscious - origins of the mind/what we know ♣ ‘Should I?’ ♣ Moral part of the personality, internal judge, seen as the conscience. - nothing more than inherited tradition/social setting - guilty conscience = product of social demands - Super-ego takes on the role of the parent, will punish/reward ego - no such thing as conscience. it only refers to guilt of super-ego - super-ego symbolically internalises the sense of a father figure, tends to oppose the id. The more the Oedipus Complex is repressed, the stricter the rule of the super-ego over the id will be, greater sense of guilt. too much attention to the super-ego’s judgemental voice would lead to unhealthy repression and neurosis

Answer 10

o Sexual desires and pleasure which form the libido are all tied in to Freud’s stage of psychosexual development o Personality is primarily formed before age 5, early stages are very important o There are also other unconscious parts of the psyche which are influenced by parents/society, make up super ego o E.g. a child who is punished for not meeting parents’ expectations when toilet training can become an adult who is obsessed with order and control because they do not want to set themselves up for pleasure

Answer 11

♣ Any action that created pleasure through physical touch e.g. cuddling/kissing ♣ During the first 5 years of their life, children pass through a series of stages where different parts of the body bring pleasure ♣ Difficulty with this conflict can lead to ‘fixation’ (someone who seemed ‘stuck’ in a specific stage/carried over certain behaviours and habits through to adulthood) ♣ Fixation indicates an incomplete development of personality, will cause problems for rest of life

Answer 12

``` oral anal phallic latent genital ```

Answer 13

1. Oral – the mouth: sucking, swallowing etc. (Birth – 18months) ♣ Pleasure is focused around the mouth, comes from instinct of breastfeeding ♣ New-born completely dependent on caregivers esp. mother as she is meeting the child’s needs (libido) ♣ Mother’s response to baby determines how they learn about the world (will shape the ‘conscience’), positive experience = trust, negative = danger/fixation

Answer 14

1. Anal – the anus: withholding or expelling faeces (18 months – 3-4 years) ♣ Child is focused on the anus and the controlling of both the bladder and bowel ♣ Extremely important to personality development ♣ Being told to wait to empty one’s bowel/bladder controls what was originally instinctual, becomes a ‘conscious’ action (i.e. being able to empty one’s bowel/bladder whenever/wherever one wants) ♣ Comes from id but mediated by the ego

Answer 15

1. Phallic – the penis or clitoris: masturbation (Ages 3-4 – Ages 5-7) ♣ Child develops a deep sexual attraction for the parent of the opposite sex and a hatred of the parent of the same sex (the ‘Oedipus Complex’) ♣ This gives rise to socially derived feelings of guilt, realise we can never supplant the stronger parent ♣ Fears that if he pursues his sexual attraction for his mother, his father will harm him and he will be castrated (castration anxiety) ♣ Child usually resolves this by identifying with parents of same sex (age 5)

Answer 16

1. Latent – little or no sexual motivation present 2. Genital – the penis/vagina: sexual intercourse ♣ Attempts to satisfy pleasure drive are frequently checked by parental control/social coercion ♣ Development process = series of conflicts, crucial to adult mental health ♣ E.g. hysteria can be traced back to unresolved conflicts e.g. homosexuality is failure to resolve conflicts of Oedipus Complex

Answer 17

- Conscience has two dimensions o Mature: healthy, identified with the ego’s search for integrity. Concerned with right and wrong, looking forwards and outwards. o Immature: mass guilty feelings in early years as super-ego develops. Acting out of a desire to seek approval from others. - Conflict between these dimensions: feel guilty about things I was brought up to think are wrong vs. no longer thinking they are wrong. o Immature conscience urges us to conform to the will of the majority in order to live in harmony o Mature conscience is autonomous, encourages us to pursue self-fulfilment

Answer 18

o Claimed Freud was too misogynistic. o Humans believe they have free will but they don’t as human beings are reduced to a state of obedience to forces that they cannot see. o Church creates a social character for individuals as a form of control of individuality. o Authoritarian conscience (immature): guilty conscience comes from us displeasing those in authority, fear rejection e.g. ISIS/Nazi Youth o Humanistic conscience (mature): our own voice, which usually gets drowned out by authority. Breaks link between happiness and contentment = self-alienation.

Answer 19

o However, could argue that Fromm is looking at conscience too superficially, claiming that we are all influenced by external authorities does not look deeply enough into the internal conscious and subconscious reasons for being susceptible to these pressures. ♣ Others have claimed that Fromm was too influenced by his left wing political ideas, thus gave a sociological rather than psychological account of conscience. ♣ Fromm analyses the situation but does not establish a cure. ♣ Does the conscience work to give hope, joy and love? Michel Foucault argued that the conscience acts to condemn the individual and not to liberate.

Answer 20

• Provided a theory that explained the moral sense in a plausible way, can relate to sense of guilt we feel when we do something wrong. • Provides a secular explanation of guilt without need for God. Early experiences clearly impact later life.

Answer 21

• Feuerbach argued that religion is a dream of the human spirit, with God simply being a projection of the human mind as we give our own visions cosmic significance.

Answer 22

• Not everyone has contact/knowledge of their fathers, and those who do may see their father in a very different way to the way in which they see God e.g. abusive father but belief in loving God. • Theory is very male-orientated, does not account for sexual drives of women. Suggested Elektra Complex (want to kill mothers and sleep with fathers) but less developed than Oedipus. Could use Ockham’s razor to claim that there are more simple ways of explaining conscience than Freud’s which must be right.

Answer 23

• Enrich Fromm argued the super ego and conscience were interlinked but are ‘ultimately completely separate things and should be treated as such’. Our conscience enables us to assess our behaviour in relation to the way others act etc. Did not reject conscience altogether, instead wanted moral values that people own to give a sense of meaning to life. Claimed Freud was too misogynistic.

Answer 24

• Karl Gustav Jung argued against Freud’s negative portrayal of religion, claiming that aspects of RE experience could be liberating for personal development. Believed Freud’s negative approach was reflective of his experiences with sick patients whose misery was rooted in their religious upbringing.

Answer 25

• Richard Gula argues in his article ‘Conscience’ that Freud was wrong to maintain that there is no conscience, it rather should be separated from the super-ego. Super-ego is the ‘shoulds’ and ‘have tos’, belong to someone else. ‘Wants’ of the conscience belong to us, looks outside authority. o ‘When we act out of the fear of losing love or out of need to be accepted and approved, the super ego is at work. The moral conscience, on the other hand, acts out of love for others and in response to the call to commit ourselves to values’

Answer 26

• Karl Popper argued that much of psychology was not scientific as it involves unfalsifiable hypotheses. Difficult to falsify Freud’s idea of the super-ego, cannot be sure if everyone feels guilt as he assumes.

Answer 27

• John Hick argue that Freud might not have explained God away, (Freud was an atheist and claimed that our dependence on our fathers morphs into belief in a God) but rather shown us how the experience of nature might be a way of God revealing his power and his connections with the human.

Answer 28

following your conscience will bring you into close unity with God. God knows our actions and the choices behind those actions directly, so hiding one’s actions and being unwilling to confess them to God would lead to a distance between God and man.

Answer 29

Aquinas gives one example of a case where somebody believes their conscience to be telling them to commit adultery, and another where somebody else mistakenly thinks it good to sleep with what he takes to be his wife in his own bed when in fact it is her identical twin sister. In the second case, the erroneous judgement is involuntary and therefore excusable, whereas in the first case the person ought to have known that this was morally wrong as it goes against the Primary Precepts and the moral law and so they are therefore morally responsible for their actions:

Answer 30

“Conscience is practical reason holding the human being’s duty before him for his acquittal or condemnation in every case that comes under the law.”

Answer 31

- In his Analogy of Religion to the Constitution and Course of Nature, Butler makes a link between God, nature and morality. God has created natural order, all humans have an embedded moral sense (conscience). - There is a struggle between the conscience and the passions which steer humans on the wrong path. - Solution is to live a disciplined and moral life. - Butler and Newman find it less straightforward than Aquinas to account for errors in the application of conscience. Newman deals with it by arguing we sometimes have a false conscience by listening to our desires and telling ourselves that our conscience is speaking. - Butler assumes that if we only attended to it, our God-given conscience would give us the right answers.

Answer 32

he does not take into account that people may do the vilest things in the name of conscience.

Answer 33

divine command theory | moral standards of behaviour emanate from God

Answer 34

child’s ability to reason morally depends on cognitive development 2 stages of development heteronomous morality (5-10) - morality is external restraint - conscience is immature autonomous morality (10+) - ability to think abstractly develops and we are able to think and reason things out for ourselves - morality is characterised by co-operation and reciprocity

Answer 35

developed kohlberg's work 6 stages to acquire mature conscience 1-3, authority influences conscience 4-5, keeping the law 6, respect of others

Answer 36

conscience has its roots in the quest for survival and reproduction at the heart of evolution conscience is developed in order to provide a survival advantage

Conscience Flashcards

(60 cards)