Conscience
Aquinas’ theological approach:
Conscience is based on the principle of reason and entails action of the mind performed in
the here and now.
Ratio: reason placed in every person as a result of being created in the image of
God.
It is ‘practica ratio’: using reason in practice (rather than speculative). Entails knowing both
what ‘should’ be done, and how to bring about this end with the means available.
Synderesis: inner principle directing a person towards good and away from evil.
This is part of God’s will, and is natural in all beings. It is infallible: can never be wrong to do
good and avoid evil.
There is also sensuality within us that tempts us to evil e.g Garden of Eden, but
humans lean away from this for the most part (although it can sometimes interfere
with our use of reason)
Conscientia: a person’s reason making moral judgement.
Conscientia is the practical application or ratio and synderesis: ‘Reason making right
decisions’ (Aquinas)
Here errors can be made (not infallible), we might be mistaken or misuse our
reason.
Part of Aquinas’ definition of ‘good’ is ‘rationally chosen’, so if we follow our reason
we will always do ‘good’. Thus if we don’t follow reason we are seeking something
other than what is ‘good’: this is a sin.
Links to Aquinas’ belief in importance of free will: agents capable of rational
decisions. God expects us to use this and be more than creatures that follow
irrational urges.
Theology and conscience:
We are the way we are because of the will of God, and God willed that we have the
skills of intellect and the potential for good.
Thus we have a duty to follow our conscience, even if this leads to an objectively
wrong decision.
The ability to do right and avoid evil is God given, but it is up to us to use our reason
to bring this about. Our conscience is not the ‘voice of God’, it is reason that ‘speaks’
to us.
It was for Cardinal Newman (19th c): we hear the voice of God speaking to us when when
we’re ashamed- this is our conscience. We might experience a 'counterfeit’ conscience
which is influenced by e.g our own inward desires. For this reason, conscience will almost
always be in line with official Church teaching.
Vincible ignorance: lack of knowledge for which a person is responsible. These are
things a person is expected to know, or are not difficult to find out or overcome e.g
someone drives badly because they are drunk, see this in the law ‘ignorance of the
law [which is easy to find out] is not a defence’.
Aristotle agreed ‘if they are thought to be ignorant through carelessness’.
Invincible ignorance: lack of knowledge for which a person is not responsible, when
we cannot reasonably foresee the consequences of our action e.g buying someone a
holiday where they end up breaking a leg: might feel regret and wish it turned out
differently but are in no way blameworthy.
Also involves people who are not fully conscious of their decision making
(not through their own fault e.g intoxication): young children, cases of
extreme mental illness (though this is notoriously difficult to measure).
Again, alike to advanced legal systems today.
,Pros:
Mistakes: explains how conscience can sometimes be incorrect- wrong use of
reason, following apparent goods. Sympathetic to cases where the ‘right’ action is
unknowable, as is often the case. Shows how we can determine someone’s
responsibility.
Universal: everyone experiences and can apply reason. Explains why there is
widespread agreement on key elements of morality e.g don’t lie, murder.
Cons:
Good and evil: implies an objective understanding of what these things are, that
they are naturally instilled in us (Synderesis). We see that these concepts are often
culture bound, and are not universal across all of humanity e.g some societies
promote child marriage, but considered abhorrent in many Western countries.
God: based on religious belief- relies on God to give us reason and an inclination
towards good. Does not provide an atheistic grounding for conscience.
However, reason is not the voice of God, just God-given, so hypothetically
could be used regardless of religion.
Freud’s psychological approach:
The clash between the id, ego and super-ego is what leads to the phenomena of guilt and
conscience (product of psychological factors).
Conscience is the process of internalising parental prohibitions and demands, so that
they seem to come from within ourselves. This is what creates the ‘super-ego’.
Psychosexual development (early childhood awareness of libido)
Babies are ‘all id’, for which libido (sex-drive) is a fundamental part.
For Freud, we are all innately sexual beings who go through ‘stages’ of psychosexual
development: oral (based on love of being nursed at the breast), anal (ability to
control own bowels), phallic (fascination with sexual organs)- then a period of
latency where a child ignores their sexual urges before puberty.
Sexual nature re-emerges at puberty but along with subconscious
recollections of parental and societal warnings to ignore sexual feelings:
child is no longer ‘all id’. Time of sexual experimentation: ‘genital’ stage.
For Freud there were three parts of the ‘psychic apparatus’.
Id: instinctive impulses that seek satisfaction in pleasure e.g food, aggression, sex. A
baby only has id.
Ego: rational part of the mind that mediates between the id and the demands of
social interaction: it isn’t socially acceptable to seek immediate gratification for all
desires. Analogy of the rider (ego) controlling and guiding the horse (id).
Ego tends to be more loyal to the id in times of conflict, for which it is
punished by feelings of inferiority, anxiety and guilt by the super-ego. Ego
can try to protect itself from these feelings using e.g repression or fantasy.
Super-ego: contradicts the id and develop as a result of socialisation and growth and
the effect of parents and authority figures (must be learnt as we are born ‘tabula
rasa’). Tries to make the ego behave morally by setting up taboos against certain
types of feelings and actions (especially sexual).
The more the Oedipus Complex (natural inclination for men to sleep with
their mothers and kill their fathers) is repressed e.g by parents, schooling
etc. the more dominant the super-ego will be over the ego and leading to
stronger sense of guilt and conscience rejecting our natural urges.
‘The more virtuous a man is, the more severe his super-ego’
Freud and God:
, Primitive times nature e.g floods, earthquakes etc. would’ve been terrifying
to our ancestors, state of helplessness. But things are less terrifying if we
can explain them and is a result of some personal action e.g of God, because
then we can do something about it.
o Attempt to please our imagined gods with gifts, sacrifices and draw
the wrong conclusions through the ‘post hoc, propter hoc’ fallacy
(logcial error assuming that one event following another is
causation’ e.g sacrificing a goat leads to the end of a storm (which
was inevitable anyway for other reasons).
Father is a powerful figure domestically- provides means of
sustenance on which all else depends- and we project this memory
of a father onto God. (Also if the ‘super-ego’ is the internalised
sense of a father figure then easy to see how this could be mis-
interpreted as Cardinal Newman’s ‘voice of God’)
Religion is constructed out of our own needs and desires, similar to A.J
Ayer’s statement that talking about religious experience ‘merely gives us
indirect information about the condition of [one’s] own mind’.
Pros:
Plausible: suggests that we get our moral sense and guilt from upbringing or
authority figures. No doubt that our early experiences shape our world picture, even
if there is doubt about how this shaping takes place.
God: provides an atheistic, (supposedly) scientific explanation for a conscience
without the physical existence of God. One of the first to do so.
Piaget: similar to his belief of the immature (age 5-10 guilty feelings which come
with disciplining and seeking approval of others) and mature (11+ outward-looking
challenges and questions authority, forms our own rules ) consciences. Like Freud
suggesting guilt is a psychological issue to be overcome.
Cons:
Moral responsibility: if our behaviours/judgements are a result of conflict in our
subconscious, could we ever hold someone accountable for their actions (especially
since the act of judging is a consequence of repressing similarly dark urges)? Freud
fails to adequately answer this.
Not scientific: no empirical evidence for ideas such as Oedipus Complex. Scientific
basis is widely disputed.
Goes against Ockham’s Razor: if we found a theory for guilt less reliant
speculative hypotheses it’s more likely to be correct.
Not falsifiable: Karl Popper, much of psychology is not scientific because it discusses
what happens in the mind e.g if I say I do not feel an overwhelming sense of guilt
then a Freudian might reply that my ego had repressed this sense and that my denial
was evidence for its existence.
Limited experimental basis: many of the cases upon which he makes his conclusions
were anecdotal testimonies of largely female, middle-class Viennese patients. Not all
families would have the same upbringing as these patients e.g no contact or
knowledge of fathers- such children may have a different conception of God from
the way they view their fathers e.g look to God for solace.
Too simple: cannot ever explain something as complex as the human mind in these
terms.
Sexist: male-oriented ideas, Oedipus Complex accounts for men- women here are
passive victims. (Frued did suggest an Electra Complex, sleep with fathers etc. but
, argument for this is thinner). Also ideas of ‘sexual desire’ are always linked to
heterosexual intercourse
Quick comparison:
Conscience is a use of reason (Aquinas), a social/psychological construct (Freud).
Discovered, God-given (Aquinas), acquired, developmental (Freud)
Guilt and desire are facts about who we are (Aquinas), feelings to be explained
(Freud)
Neither is concerned with the reasonableness of our thoughts about our actions
Evaluation qs:
Is conscience linked to, or separate from, reason and the unconscious mind?
Does conscience actually exist or is it instead an umbrella term covering various
factors involved in moral decision-making e.g culture, environment, genetic
predisposition (Fletcher: conscience is a ‘function not a faculty’)
Meta-ethics
Study of underlying ethical ideas or language, what is ‘goodness’ and how can we define it?
Naturalism: the belief that values can be defined in terms of some natural property of the
world
Naturalists suggest that moral truths can be discovered by observation of the
natural world- morally realist (moral facts exists) and cognitive (can be true or false,
they are absolute/objective).
Naturalism argues that ethical language has cognitive meaning because it
directly refers to what we experience and therefore can be verified.
Therefore ethical language is objective: for example, Utilitarianism argues
that we can all see that ‘cruelty is an ethically bad act’ because we know
that it brings suffering when we see this occur in the empirical world (and
Utilitarians argue that the most useful ethical action is one which brings the
‘greatest aggregate pleasure’).
Aquinas: we can determine what is morally right by understanding our God given
purpose, through observation of the natural world- see Natural Law theory. This
leads to absolute morality, we must always do that which fulfils our God-given
purpose.
Utilitarianism: observation of what causes pleasure and pain allows us to determine
what actions are good and bad. For Bentham and Mill pleasure=good. More relative
morality, what causes the most pleasure (or ‘good’) will vary situationally Ie things
that bring pleasure are highly subjective. But could also be viewed as absolute: must
always do that which maximises balance of pleasure over pain (underlying principle
remains the same, so absolute).
Pros:
Agreement: idea of objective moral facts that have truth value is supported
by the fact that there is broad agreement on moral issues across almost all
societies e.g killing a member of one’s own community is ‘bad’, protecting
the innocent is ‘good’.
Progress: the idea of moral progress implies that ethical language points to
real things- must be cognitive. Morality must have some fixed existence if
Aquinas’ theological approach:
Conscience is based on the principle of reason and entails action of the mind performed in
the here and now.
Ratio: reason placed in every person as a result of being created in the image of
God.
It is ‘practica ratio’: using reason in practice (rather than speculative). Entails knowing both
what ‘should’ be done, and how to bring about this end with the means available.
Synderesis: inner principle directing a person towards good and away from evil.
This is part of God’s will, and is natural in all beings. It is infallible: can never be wrong to do
good and avoid evil.
There is also sensuality within us that tempts us to evil e.g Garden of Eden, but
humans lean away from this for the most part (although it can sometimes interfere
with our use of reason)
Conscientia: a person’s reason making moral judgement.
Conscientia is the practical application or ratio and synderesis: ‘Reason making right
decisions’ (Aquinas)
Here errors can be made (not infallible), we might be mistaken or misuse our
reason.
Part of Aquinas’ definition of ‘good’ is ‘rationally chosen’, so if we follow our reason
we will always do ‘good’. Thus if we don’t follow reason we are seeking something
other than what is ‘good’: this is a sin.
Links to Aquinas’ belief in importance of free will: agents capable of rational
decisions. God expects us to use this and be more than creatures that follow
irrational urges.
Theology and conscience:
We are the way we are because of the will of God, and God willed that we have the
skills of intellect and the potential for good.
Thus we have a duty to follow our conscience, even if this leads to an objectively
wrong decision.
The ability to do right and avoid evil is God given, but it is up to us to use our reason
to bring this about. Our conscience is not the ‘voice of God’, it is reason that ‘speaks’
to us.
It was for Cardinal Newman (19th c): we hear the voice of God speaking to us when when
we’re ashamed- this is our conscience. We might experience a 'counterfeit’ conscience
which is influenced by e.g our own inward desires. For this reason, conscience will almost
always be in line with official Church teaching.
Vincible ignorance: lack of knowledge for which a person is responsible. These are
things a person is expected to know, or are not difficult to find out or overcome e.g
someone drives badly because they are drunk, see this in the law ‘ignorance of the
law [which is easy to find out] is not a defence’.
Aristotle agreed ‘if they are thought to be ignorant through carelessness’.
Invincible ignorance: lack of knowledge for which a person is not responsible, when
we cannot reasonably foresee the consequences of our action e.g buying someone a
holiday where they end up breaking a leg: might feel regret and wish it turned out
differently but are in no way blameworthy.
Also involves people who are not fully conscious of their decision making
(not through their own fault e.g intoxication): young children, cases of
extreme mental illness (though this is notoriously difficult to measure).
Again, alike to advanced legal systems today.
,Pros:
Mistakes: explains how conscience can sometimes be incorrect- wrong use of
reason, following apparent goods. Sympathetic to cases where the ‘right’ action is
unknowable, as is often the case. Shows how we can determine someone’s
responsibility.
Universal: everyone experiences and can apply reason. Explains why there is
widespread agreement on key elements of morality e.g don’t lie, murder.
Cons:
Good and evil: implies an objective understanding of what these things are, that
they are naturally instilled in us (Synderesis). We see that these concepts are often
culture bound, and are not universal across all of humanity e.g some societies
promote child marriage, but considered abhorrent in many Western countries.
God: based on religious belief- relies on God to give us reason and an inclination
towards good. Does not provide an atheistic grounding for conscience.
However, reason is not the voice of God, just God-given, so hypothetically
could be used regardless of religion.
Freud’s psychological approach:
The clash between the id, ego and super-ego is what leads to the phenomena of guilt and
conscience (product of psychological factors).
Conscience is the process of internalising parental prohibitions and demands, so that
they seem to come from within ourselves. This is what creates the ‘super-ego’.
Psychosexual development (early childhood awareness of libido)
Babies are ‘all id’, for which libido (sex-drive) is a fundamental part.
For Freud, we are all innately sexual beings who go through ‘stages’ of psychosexual
development: oral (based on love of being nursed at the breast), anal (ability to
control own bowels), phallic (fascination with sexual organs)- then a period of
latency where a child ignores their sexual urges before puberty.
Sexual nature re-emerges at puberty but along with subconscious
recollections of parental and societal warnings to ignore sexual feelings:
child is no longer ‘all id’. Time of sexual experimentation: ‘genital’ stage.
For Freud there were three parts of the ‘psychic apparatus’.
Id: instinctive impulses that seek satisfaction in pleasure e.g food, aggression, sex. A
baby only has id.
Ego: rational part of the mind that mediates between the id and the demands of
social interaction: it isn’t socially acceptable to seek immediate gratification for all
desires. Analogy of the rider (ego) controlling and guiding the horse (id).
Ego tends to be more loyal to the id in times of conflict, for which it is
punished by feelings of inferiority, anxiety and guilt by the super-ego. Ego
can try to protect itself from these feelings using e.g repression or fantasy.
Super-ego: contradicts the id and develop as a result of socialisation and growth and
the effect of parents and authority figures (must be learnt as we are born ‘tabula
rasa’). Tries to make the ego behave morally by setting up taboos against certain
types of feelings and actions (especially sexual).
The more the Oedipus Complex (natural inclination for men to sleep with
their mothers and kill their fathers) is repressed e.g by parents, schooling
etc. the more dominant the super-ego will be over the ego and leading to
stronger sense of guilt and conscience rejecting our natural urges.
‘The more virtuous a man is, the more severe his super-ego’
Freud and God:
, Primitive times nature e.g floods, earthquakes etc. would’ve been terrifying
to our ancestors, state of helplessness. But things are less terrifying if we
can explain them and is a result of some personal action e.g of God, because
then we can do something about it.
o Attempt to please our imagined gods with gifts, sacrifices and draw
the wrong conclusions through the ‘post hoc, propter hoc’ fallacy
(logcial error assuming that one event following another is
causation’ e.g sacrificing a goat leads to the end of a storm (which
was inevitable anyway for other reasons).
Father is a powerful figure domestically- provides means of
sustenance on which all else depends- and we project this memory
of a father onto God. (Also if the ‘super-ego’ is the internalised
sense of a father figure then easy to see how this could be mis-
interpreted as Cardinal Newman’s ‘voice of God’)
Religion is constructed out of our own needs and desires, similar to A.J
Ayer’s statement that talking about religious experience ‘merely gives us
indirect information about the condition of [one’s] own mind’.
Pros:
Plausible: suggests that we get our moral sense and guilt from upbringing or
authority figures. No doubt that our early experiences shape our world picture, even
if there is doubt about how this shaping takes place.
God: provides an atheistic, (supposedly) scientific explanation for a conscience
without the physical existence of God. One of the first to do so.
Piaget: similar to his belief of the immature (age 5-10 guilty feelings which come
with disciplining and seeking approval of others) and mature (11+ outward-looking
challenges and questions authority, forms our own rules ) consciences. Like Freud
suggesting guilt is a psychological issue to be overcome.
Cons:
Moral responsibility: if our behaviours/judgements are a result of conflict in our
subconscious, could we ever hold someone accountable for their actions (especially
since the act of judging is a consequence of repressing similarly dark urges)? Freud
fails to adequately answer this.
Not scientific: no empirical evidence for ideas such as Oedipus Complex. Scientific
basis is widely disputed.
Goes against Ockham’s Razor: if we found a theory for guilt less reliant
speculative hypotheses it’s more likely to be correct.
Not falsifiable: Karl Popper, much of psychology is not scientific because it discusses
what happens in the mind e.g if I say I do not feel an overwhelming sense of guilt
then a Freudian might reply that my ego had repressed this sense and that my denial
was evidence for its existence.
Limited experimental basis: many of the cases upon which he makes his conclusions
were anecdotal testimonies of largely female, middle-class Viennese patients. Not all
families would have the same upbringing as these patients e.g no contact or
knowledge of fathers- such children may have a different conception of God from
the way they view their fathers e.g look to God for solace.
Too simple: cannot ever explain something as complex as the human mind in these
terms.
Sexist: male-oriented ideas, Oedipus Complex accounts for men- women here are
passive victims. (Frued did suggest an Electra Complex, sleep with fathers etc. but
, argument for this is thinner). Also ideas of ‘sexual desire’ are always linked to
heterosexual intercourse
Quick comparison:
Conscience is a use of reason (Aquinas), a social/psychological construct (Freud).
Discovered, God-given (Aquinas), acquired, developmental (Freud)
Guilt and desire are facts about who we are (Aquinas), feelings to be explained
(Freud)
Neither is concerned with the reasonableness of our thoughts about our actions
Evaluation qs:
Is conscience linked to, or separate from, reason and the unconscious mind?
Does conscience actually exist or is it instead an umbrella term covering various
factors involved in moral decision-making e.g culture, environment, genetic
predisposition (Fletcher: conscience is a ‘function not a faculty’)
Meta-ethics
Study of underlying ethical ideas or language, what is ‘goodness’ and how can we define it?
Naturalism: the belief that values can be defined in terms of some natural property of the
world
Naturalists suggest that moral truths can be discovered by observation of the
natural world- morally realist (moral facts exists) and cognitive (can be true or false,
they are absolute/objective).
Naturalism argues that ethical language has cognitive meaning because it
directly refers to what we experience and therefore can be verified.
Therefore ethical language is objective: for example, Utilitarianism argues
that we can all see that ‘cruelty is an ethically bad act’ because we know
that it brings suffering when we see this occur in the empirical world (and
Utilitarians argue that the most useful ethical action is one which brings the
‘greatest aggregate pleasure’).
Aquinas: we can determine what is morally right by understanding our God given
purpose, through observation of the natural world- see Natural Law theory. This
leads to absolute morality, we must always do that which fulfils our God-given
purpose.
Utilitarianism: observation of what causes pleasure and pain allows us to determine
what actions are good and bad. For Bentham and Mill pleasure=good. More relative
morality, what causes the most pleasure (or ‘good’) will vary situationally Ie things
that bring pleasure are highly subjective. But could also be viewed as absolute: must
always do that which maximises balance of pleasure over pain (underlying principle
remains the same, so absolute).
Pros:
Agreement: idea of objective moral facts that have truth value is supported
by the fact that there is broad agreement on moral issues across almost all
societies e.g killing a member of one’s own community is ‘bad’, protecting
the innocent is ‘good’.
Progress: the idea of moral progress implies that ethical language points to
real things- must be cognitive. Morality must have some fixed existence if
