Conscience

Conscience

1. William Butler

   • Faculty of reflection
     • How he defined conscience - influenced by Aristotle and Aquinas - conscience = a faculty that separates humans from other sentient beings - we are aware of every situation - other creatures have no awareness + do not try to understand their being but Humans do - it is from this reflective nature that conscience develops.
   • Self love and benevolence
     • Desire for one's own well-being = self love, benevolence = hope for well-being of others
       • Conscience seeks to harmonise the two
   • Intuitive
     • Conscience is an intuitive gift from God - a "natural guide" which controls human nature
   • Ultimate Authority
     • Conscience must be unquestioningly obeyed

2. Cardinal Newman

   • Conscience informs our decision making
   • Conscience = voice of God = following the law of God - conscience is supreme
   • "The conscience is the voice of God. It is the voice of the lawgiver."
   • Nature gives humans awareness of God and goodness. Nurture is capable of destroying this.

3. Sigmund Freud

   • ID, EGO, SUPEREGO
     • Superego = inner parents which controls behaviour - rewarding parent - but can be more likely to be punishing parent
       • Persons experiences impact on development and make us who we are
     • ID - behaves instinctively
     • EGO - rational self which interacts with society
   • Anxiety
     • Children are anxious to avoid displeasing parents - this anxiety is felt when committing an immoral act
     • Oedipus complex
       • Feelings of anger towards the father + sexual attraction towards the mother are repressed into unconscious mind resulting in feelings of guilt - conscience develops from this guilt
         • Religious people integrated this guilt in response to ideas about God & non-religious people in response to authority eg government, family, society

4. Erich Fromm

   • Authoritarian Conscience
     • Who we are comes from those around us who exert authority - it involves rewarding/punishing actions
       • Authority becomes internalised within time + central to our understanding of authority
   • Good conscience
     • Conscience begins with a child's experience of their parents - from birth humans are in a state of obedience - AUTHORITARIAN CONSCIENCE
       • submission + obedience = reward + sense of well-being
         • good authoritarian conscience provides security + sense of well-being - it should be a good thing and make you feel good about yourself
       • TINA - There is no alternative - humans are inducing into believing that they control their lives, but they do not.
   • Guilty Conscience
     • rebellion + disobedience = punishment + fear + insecurity - conscience continues to develop depending on culture, education and environment
   • Humanitarian conscience
     • matures from authoritarian conscience through developed virtues and following good role models - moderated behaviour
       • conscience can become our own voice - 'the real conscience'
         • MILIGRAM EXPERIMENT
           • Experiment persuades the participant to give what the participant believes are painful electric shocks to another participant who is actually an actor. 65% continued to give shocks despite pleas from the actor - Miligram suggested one of the major factors accounting for the Holocaust was the ready propensity of humans to obey authorities even when obedience is wrong.

5. Jean Piaget

   • heteronomous morality
     • morality determined by others, such as parents and society
       • develops from early years until the age of 9 or 10 - child does not decide his/her moral stance - this is decided by the parents and upbringing. Moral conscience is the observation of rules. Some people never develop beyond this stage - their life is dominated by the need to obey precise rules of behaviour - they may look to God or a judge.
   • Autonomous morality
     • Morality determined by the self
       • The majority of humans do develop - they are mature enough to decide what is good for them and what is not. Morality is a matter of self-discipline and not external discipline - this process begins at around 10 years old.

6. Definition - "A persons moral sense of right and wrong, viewed as acting as a guide to one's behaviour."

   • Problem of definition - no evidence of a conscience/how it operates

7. Augustine of Hippo

   • Conscience is the voice of God whispering to use innately about what is right and wrong, sense of moral right and wrong is preserved in conscience. He identified the conscience as being within us. He claimed that we intuitively seek what brings us closer to God and what he is asking of us.
   • Voice of God within us

8. Thomas Aquinas

   • Recta Ratio
     • Identified with Syderesis - an intellectual process of gaining knowledge through sifting through evidence logically.
   • Syderisis - greek word for Conscientia
     • Right reason - gives knowledge of the primary precepts/Natural Law
   • Conscientia
     • tells us what is good and evil - but not infallible. A corrupted conscientia could lead to wrong answers.
       • The process of applying right reason to a specific issue
         • Conscience must always be obeyed even if it means breaking the law/being excommunicated - real goods should be followed
       • Vincible Ignorance - deliberately ignoring facts - guilty
       • Invincible Ignorance - not aware of all facts eg lied to - not guilty
   • Golden Mean
   • Conscience = not an inner voice but rather reason making right decisions - a rationalist account - workings of the mind + use of reason.