Conscience

Question 1

What does Augustine define conscience as?

Answer 1

conscience is the voice of God speaking to us about what is right and wrong

Question 2

what is Augustine’s quote about conscience?

Answer 2

“return to your conscience, question it. Turn inward brethren and in everything you do see God as your witness”

Question 3

strengths of augustine’s approach to conscience

Answer 3

• bible is a source of authority (‘god breathed’)
• if god is all loving/powerful then he has the power to inform the conscience with the most loving action
• people have had religious experiences where they claim to hear god’s voice eg MLK, Nicky Cruz

Question 4

weaknesses of augustine’s approach to conscience

Answer 4

• god could use power in the wrong way - a loving god would not use his power for evil when speaking through the conscience
• the experience of hearing God is very subjective - could be wish fulfilment, etc
• God can command immoral actions - Abraham sacrificing Isaac

Question 5

what is rachel’s weakness of augustine’s view of conscience

Answer 5

to follow God’s voice through the conscience is to give up one’s moral autonomy

Question 6

what is ayer’s weakness of augustine’s view of conscience

Answer 6

“No command can be based on authority alone” Any talk of moral commands and God is meaningless and purely expressions of emotion.

Question 7

what is leibniz’s weakness of augustine’s view of conscience

Answer 7

God arbitrarily changes his mind so should not be trusted when speaking through conscience - God’s can give different messages at different times e.g to the Israelites he told them “do not kill” and to Joshua in the Old Testament he was commanded to kill the Ammorites in war including the women and children.

Question 8

what is aquinas’ view of the conscience?

Answer 8

To understand conscience we have to understand reason (RATIO) which distinguishes us from animals. Reason can move us from knowledge of this world to the eternal world, the divine world. Reason directs us to the absolute good - the natural laws - using empirical evidence of the world around us, which helps us work out the primary precepts.

Question 9

what is conscientia?

Answer 9

reason making right decisions - a person must use their reason to decide that good is to be done and evil avoided.

Question 10

what is vincible ignorance

Answer 10

a lack of knowledge for which a person ought to have known better. It is not excusable to make a wrong moral decision because of knowledge that one should have known.

Question 11

what is invincible ignorance

Answer 11

this is wrong information for which we are not responsible

Question 12

what does the catechism say on conscience ?

Answer 12

” A well informed conscience is upright and truthful. It formulates its judgements according to reason, in conformity with the true Good willed by the wisdom of the creator.”

Question 13

what are the strengths of aquinas’ view on conscience?

Answer 13

• Aquinas’ stress on ratio overcomes the problems of Augustine’s approach. One is obedient only to one’s own conscience which should be fully informed.
• Bishop Dowling - allowed condoms for same sex couples to prevent transmission of AIDs
• maintains free will - uses reason
• means we cannot blame others for our mistakes
• takes into account our telos - that we all have a CHN

Question 14

what are the weaknesses of aquinas’ view on conscience?

Answer 14

• For some evangelical Christians conscience is the Word of God in the tradition of St. Augustine.
• cultural relativism - and yet Aquinas believes that with the right use of ratio humans should end up following the same absolute natural moral laws.
• some people follow their conscience and do not do good
• Kai Nelson and Hans Kung claim we do not have a common human nature and G. E Moore claims we cannot derive an is from an ought
• Aquinas fails to take account of the fact that shame and guilt often heavily influence our conscience.
• Dawkins/Russell - no god, no NML, “brute fact”

Question 15

freud - what is the id?

Answer 15

the unconscious mind. It contains our basic desires and needs, wish fulfilment and dreams of gratification. It functions in the irrational and emotional part of the mind. It seeks immediate gratification and when our needs are not immediately met tension can arise. It is not always possible to satisfy these needs. It is also known as the Pleasure Principle because left to its own devices we would seek to gratify all of our desires immediately such as eating, sleeping, having sex, taking drugs.

Question 16

freud - what is the ego?

Answer 16

the conscious aspect of the mind which makes decisions. It must balance the id and superego when making decisions (shown by the analogy of the horse and rider).

Question 17

freud - what is the superego?

Answer 17

the unconscious, last part of the mind to develop. It is the internalised standards of right and wrong that children acquire form their family. Parents praise their children when they fulfil rules and this leads to a sense of pride, affirmation and approval. They also punish and rebuke when the children fail to live up to the rules which leads to guilt and shame for bad actions. The superego is the internalised voice of authority. The more a person is dominated by the superego the more they will not wish to break rules and the more they will want to please external authorities. If they do act on their wishes and desires they will feel guilty and develop neurosis.

Question 18

what is conscience for freud?

Answer 18

not a term used for discerning the moral thing to do but is a term used for guilty feelings caused by the superego. These feelings arise from the interplay between the id, ego and superego.

Question 19

what is the oedipus complex?

Answer 19

Freud argued that, at the Oedipal stage, usually from three to five years old, the child experiences an erotic attachment to one parent and hostility toward the other parent. They want to push the other parent away. The desire has to be repressed. This leaves the child feeling guilty and angry. This is all subconscious. The child would not be aware of it.
However, Freud believed that most mental disorders find their roots in this stage of development.

Question 20

why did freud believe religion was popular?

Answer 20

because it helped to alleviate the feelings of guilt left over from the Oedipus complex e.g confession in the Catholic church helps to alleviate guilt. He believed that people behave morally to try to overcome the guilt left over from the Oedipus complex. This is connected to the superego because we feel guilt which is repressed in the same way as Oedipus and all of us feel guilt due to erotic attachment to one parent and pushing away the other.

Question 21

how do mackie/boas/sumner/protagoras support freud?

Answer 21

Moral and cultural relativism suggests that we feel guilt differently because our upbringings are different

Question 22

strengths of freud

Answer 22

• Used Darwin’s ideas about primal hordes to explain the beginnings of the guilty conscience. This was a group of people centred around a father/male figure who has a claim over the females. Over time the younger men resent this and gather together to kill the father. They have mixed feelings - hatred and veneration and this leads to religious worship which alleviates the guilt they feel after killing him.
• 5 case studies - eg Little Hans
• Freud as a psychologist took account of the process of moral awareness (the formation and interaction of the ego, superego and id) and how we know our morals. He took this seriously and it has subsequently led many psychologists such as Erich Fromm and Piaget to develop this area. Fromm claimed that humans obey authority figures out of fear. He observed this through the Third Reich whereby Jews were shot if they disobeyed orders.
• Freud stresses the role of guilt in conscience and this undoubtedly plays a role on morality and ethical decision making. We all experience guilt to lesser and greater extents and he took this seriously.
• Freud was able to suggest that to some extent at the level of the superego our morality is determined. He recognised that our freedom is diminished in some areas due to the different parts of the mind.
• The Oedipus complex is evidence that that guilt is universal and comes from sexual childhood trauma.

Question 23

weaknesses of freud

Answer 23

• Limited number of case studies only on upper class Austrian women
• Freud can not prove that the superego does come from society and authority figures. It may come from elsewhere.
  
  • Conscience may well have an objective source of morality, a God who directs our moral awareness (St. Augustine and Cardinal Newman) or a God who has given humans ratio to know the laws and act on them through the conscientia. . There may well be an absolute truth which is known somehow through the conscience as God’s truth.
• Freud has no conclusive evidence for believing there is no God and that conscience does not come from God-either directly as a voice or through the use of God given ratio.
• Freud can not prove conclusively that religion arises from inner childhood conflict. Another psychologist, William James would argue that religion arises out of religious experience.
• Darwin’s speculations about the hordes are unlikely to be true. - not all tribes have an alpha male - some have an alpha female
• In the animal world the mother and father are supportive. They do not do anything to encourage rivalry and hatred. This would mean that males have not felt rivalry feelings to their fathers and then alleviated the feelings of guilt through the rituals of religion. This cannot therefore explain the conscience - superego.

Question 24

weaknesses of freud - palmer

Answer 24

“almost all the evidence that Freud used has been discredited in one way or another. “

Question 25

what is gula’s view of the conscience?

Answer 25

• He stresses that conscience should not be understood in terms of laws to be followed but in terms of how people understand the world.
  
  • He argued that VISION and CHOICE are the two key concepts which are connected to what conscience is. The way we understand and SEE the world (Vision) determines /affects the moral CHOICES that we make.
  • Different communities see the world in different ways and this means that around the world people make different choices depending on the communities that they live in.
  • Gula states that the conscience has to be educated. He claims that we have to consult different sources as we form our conscience e.g our parents, family, friends, experts. Christians consult scripture, creeds, the lives of religious moral exemplars and theologians past and present.

Question 26

what is fletcher’s view of the conscience?

Answer 26

• Conscience is a process of decision making and not a separate something. You use reason to work through the 4 and 6 principles that he puts forward. It is a verb and not a noun. To do not a conscience that is separate to us or comes from beyond us.

Question 27

what is zimbardo’s view of conscience?

Answer 27

• Situational approach to conscience
  
  • Authority figures tell us what to do and we obey (Milgram experiment, Stanford Prison Experiment)
  • However there is evidence of people not following authority eg MLK, Brixton Riots, Bus Boycott

Question 28

what is dawkin’s view of the conscience

Answer 28

• Conscience is explained by evolution and genes
  
  • When we do good moral acts and help others its due to “a misfiring of the genes”.
    There is no God who speaks to us or no reason from God.

Question 29

what is fromm’s view of the conscience?

Answer 29

• Fromm claimed that humans obey authority figures out of fear. He observed this through the Third Reich whereby Jews were shot if they disobeyed orders. This was an immature Conscience at work.
  
  • He concluded that it is possible to develop a Humanistic conscience whereby we move away from this sort of obedience and think for ourselves because we have free will and a drive for self actualisation. We have the ability to judge and evaluate our own behaviour making us the judge of morality.