Conscience Flashcards
Synderesis
The inner principle directing a person towards good and away form evil
Conscientia
A person’s reason making moral judgements
Ego
The part of our personality that mediates between the id and the demads of social interaction
Id
The instinctive impulses that seek satisfaction in pleasure
Superego
The internalised ideals from parents and society that tries to make the ego behave morally
Ratio
- our God given reason
- works out what is right to do and what is practicle in given the circumstances
Wilkinson and wilcockson
- architect designing a house - he may know what sort of house he wants to build but also needs to recognise the constraints he must work in
Vincible ignornace
Lack of knowledge for which a person is responsible
- applied reason incorectly
Invinsible ignorance
Lack of knowledge for which a person is not responsible
Invinsible ignorance example
A men sleeps with a woman who he mistakes for his wide that is not his wife (and she thinks he is her husband), they are not morally responsible
Freuds three aspects of personality
Ego, id, superego
Psychosexual development
Oedipus complex - male child pre-sexual development, child develops fixation for mother and views father as an obsticle to develop sexual desires
- child is jealous of father
freud’s stages
- Oral - 0-1
- anal - 1-3
- phallic - 3-6
Conscience stems from reason or unconscious mind - Aquinas
- a product of reason
- God has created
- have synderisis within us
- use our conscientia to apply and make moral judgemets
Conscience stems from reason or unconscious mind - freud
- not rational
- from unconsious mind
- super ego
- inner sturggle is subconscious and hidden from us
Erich Fromm types of conscience
- authoritarian conscience
- humanistic conscience
Fromm - Authoritarian conscience
- it is influenced by external authority
- rules are internalised by person
- disobedience causes guilt = weakens our power = makes us submissove to
- Dominate fear of authourity - inner voice
- eg ordinary germans feel guilty about disobeying the Nazis
Fromm - Humanistic conscience
- it assesses and evaluates our behaviour
- our real self that leads us to reach our full potential
- Our own inner voice reacting to how well we are functioning in life
- a higher and more developed conscience
Conscience is real and God given - Aquinas
- its real and has been given to us by God through our ratio
- Paul suggests that the gentiles and conscience regardless of access to the scriptures (OT)
- (NT) Paul warns that people can damage their conscience by persistently not listening
Conscience is real and God given - Newman
- It is the voice of God
- it is a pre-conditions - without it ther can be no such thing as morality
- it needs to be obeyed - guilt, fear or shame
- the conscience that we experience shows God exists
- we know what is right and wrong through illative sense - feeling of guilt and responsibility
Conscience and genetic predisposition
- moral attitudes and thinking has evolved
- Dawkins - humans are the sum total of their genes
- genetic explination for morality
- humans who cooperate with fellow creatures are more likely to pass in their ‘moral genes’
- we seen good and moral attitudes
Conscience as culture, environment and education - freud
Our upbringing plays a significant part in our moral views
Conscience as cultural, environment and education - Piaget
Our moral views develop throguh at least two distinct stages:
- Heteronomous = Under 10s view rules as imposed by authourity figuers
- Autonomous = Older children understand rules as a thing that human beings make and can change/ there are social perceptions and punishments in proportion with actions
- most adults use both
Guilt freud
- super ego warns us to ignore sexual feelings and punish the ego wuth feelings of inferiority, anxiety and guilt
- links between God and guilt - God is a father figure, when we give was to our natural desires we feel guilt, we pass this onto our children
- Guilt happens when we haven’t lived up to standards of authority
Guilt aquinas
- synderisis + ratio - we can wrongly apply these and so feel guilt
- if we do not follow our conscience then we are doing somethig which our reason tells us is not good. We must always follow our conscience
- if we feel guilt then we must work out if we are vinsibly or invincibly ignorat
- guilt happens becuase we have failed to live upto an absolute standard of goodness
God - freud
- sees God as an ilusion
- there are links between God and guilt
God - Aquinas
- he is designer of our human nature
- written in our design both synderesis and ratio
- to do what is good we must fulfil our telos and live up to the absolute standard of goodness for human beings
Strengths of freud
- see his explinations as scientific fact
- Piget finds some truth in his arguement - children do not question what is right and wrong until they developed an autonomous morality
- Dawkins - dissmissed God as an objective truth
- clear that parents and environment affect our moral and ethical ideas
- recognises the importance of childhood and role of parents in moral development
- explains why morals are so different
weakness of freud
- he link morality to upbringing - suggests we would have different moral views - there is no objective moral truth that we all have access to
- his work can’t be falsified so it isn’t scientific
- Freud only explains conscience as guilt, does not explain why some people seem driven to stand up agains authority rather than in obedience to it
- ignores later life experience
- does it make parents responsible for what there children do?/ what if parents are immoral
- what about children from modern families eg single parents?
Strengths aquinas
- explains why God might give conflicting messages - if christians disagree then at least one side has wrongly applied their reason
- it explains how we can change our minds on moral issues
- highly influential view - supported by Catholic Church
- clear set authority/guidance - supported by the bible
- everyone can experience reason
- included knowledge and reasoning as well as religion so everyone can apply it
Weaknesses Aquinas
- conscience feels more intuitive - we ‘feel’ first and then apply reason later (conscience is a gut reaction)
- what is right differs even when we apply ratio as a result of social and environemntal factors
- tension between the view that conscience can make mistakes and that you should always obey your conscience
- some acts can never be morally blameless
- assumes that good and evil are the same for everyone
- what happens if you don’t believe in God
Conscience - augustine
- voice of God speaking to us
- considered most seriously
- ‘see God as your witness’
- people are able to sense right and wrong because God reveals it to us personally
Conscience - Joseph butler
- essential part of being human
- separates us from animals
- it is what we use to judge an action good or bad
- automatic and authoritative
- exerts itself spontaneously ‘without being consulted’
- has the final say in moral choices
- God-given guide to right conduct
- should always be followed
- it is ‘our natural guide, the guide assigned to us by the Author of our nature’
