Conscience

Question 1

What is conscience?

Answer 1

• Conscience is the inner conviction that something is right or wrong.

Question 2

What does Kohlberg say about conscience?

Answer 2

• Kohlberg defined six stages of moral development from birth in three different levels.
  o Pre-conventional
   Stage 1, Obedience, and punishment
   Stage 2, Self-interest
  o Conventional
   Stage 3, Interpersonal accord, and conformity
   Stage 4, Authority and maintaining social order.
  o Post-conventional
   Stage 5, Social contract
   Stage 6, Universal ethical principles.
• Kohlberg tested these principles using moral dilemmas.
  o The dilemma of Heinz.
   In Europe a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer.
   There was one drug that the doctor’s thought might save her.
   Druggist paid 200 for the drug and sold for 2000.
   Heinz couldn’t afford the drug, so he stole it.
  o Responses of different levels
   Stage 1, Heinz should not steal the drug because stealing is wrong, and he would get put in prison.
   Stage 5, Heinz might take a right-to-life argument that everybody has an equal right to treatment, so Heinz should steal the drug.
   Stage 6, The individual might reason that theft is always wrong, and so refrain from stealing the drug, with the inevitable result that the wife of Heinz would die.

Question 3

What are the reactions to Kohlberg’s view of conscience?

Answer 3

• Hume
  o ‘Reason should be a slave of the passions.’
  o You decide what the right thing to do is through your intuitions about right behaviour, and only subsequently do you justify that rational or sort out how best to put your intuition into effect.

Question 4

What does Freud say about conscience?

Answer 4

• He distinguished between three elements in the mind, the id, the ego, and the super-ego.
  o The id is the unconscious and instinctive part of the personality at the level of its basic physical and emotional needs and includes,
   Eros, instinct for love, sexuality, and satisfaction
   Thanatos, drive for aggression, violence and death.
  o The ego is the rational self, it mediates between the desires of the id and what the world lets us have.
  o The super-ego is the controlling, restraining self, it develops around the age of 3-5, and it controls those impulses that can be damaging to society such as the eros and Thanatos instincts.
• Super ego acts as an ‘inner parent’.
  o The rules and regulations given to us by authority figures, such as parents are internalised.
  o To escape these thoughts brings about guilt.
  o “Only in its judging and threatening actions is the superego identified as conscience.”
• According to Freud, the conscience can function at both the conscious and the unconscious level, at the unconscious level, it manifests itself as feelings of guilt.

Question 5

What are the problems with Freud’s view?

Answer 5

• If conscience is simply an expression of our unconscious application of rules that we have been given in our early childhood, then it certainly does not provide some alternative source of moral authority, since it has no more than an expression of the wishes of one’s parents.
• Cannot be seen as a voice of God as it is just our parents, therefore, we would be expected to grow out of conscience as we develop our own views and as our ego asserts itself, but Freud says that our super-ego stays through adulthood.
• For those that see conscience as an ability to go against the norm and do what they believe is right, Freud’s view essentially reduces it down to parental conformity regardless.

Question 6

What does Durkheim say about conscience?

Answer 6

• Durkheim argued that conscience is social conditioning.
  o For Durkheim, God is society, God does not exist but is a useful idea.
  o Conscience is, therefore, a perception of loyalty to society. E.g., having a guilty conscience about the food you eat is your fear of society judging you for being too fat or too thin.
• Collective conscience.
  o Social norm.
• Evolutionary perspective on conscience
  o Conscience as a survival mechanism.

Question 7

What does Fromm say about conscience?

Answer 7

• Guilt may arise out of fear of being rejected by society because society is based on obedience to social norms.
• Authoritarian conscience.
  o The aspect of conscience which represents the internalised voice of a disapproving society which we are afraid to disobey.
• Humanistic conscience.
  o The aspect of conscience that has an intuitive knowledge of what is human and inhuman.
  o A common response of the humanistic conscience is disobedience, where that brings about flourishing.
• To reject the authoritarian form and accept the humanistic form is to free ourselves from fear and guilt.

Question 8

What did Augustine say about conscience?

Answer 8

• Conscience is innate.
  o Conscience is ‘a witness to the requirements of the law’. St Paul.
  o ‘For when will they be able to understand that there is no soul, however wicked in whose consciousness God does not speak?’. Augustine.

Question 9

What does Schleiermacher say about conscience?

Answer 9

• Conscience is God guiding people from within.

Question 10

What are the problems with Schleiermacher’s view?

Answer 10

• Amount of evil in the world suggests that either, God is not talking to everyone, or some people ignore him.
• Can’t be free if God is telling our conscience what to do.
• How do disagreements about right and wrong occur if conscience is God-given.

Question 11

What does Aquinas say about conscience?

Answer 11

• Synderesis rule, that all human beings seek to do good and avoid evil.
• Aquinas argues that what is innate for humans is not the voice of God telling them what to do but the God-given faculty of reason.
• The conscience is fallible, it can be mistaken.
• The conscience should always be followed.

Question 12

What are the problem’s with Aquinas’ view?

Answer 12

• Ignores that people act irrationally.
• Assumes that we are all aware of the synderesis rule.

Question 13

What does Butler say about conscience?

Answer 13

• Conscience is human nature placed within us by God.
• Butler’s view of the conscience is based on two governing principles of human behaviour,
  o Prudence, natural love of self
  o Benevolence, natural love of others
• Conscience is natural faculty that we have that gets our life in order and gives balance.
• Conscience works intuitively as a judge.
• Conscience is also an autonomous judge meaning that there is no sense of approval or disapproval.
• Butler argues that since conscience is a God-given faculty, it must be followed because, ‘it therefore belongs to our condition of being, it is our duty to walk in that path, and follow this guide.’

Question 14

What are the problems with Butler’s view?

Answer 14

• Kant, what exactly is a faculty of the conscience and how do we observe it in the human mind.

Question 15

What did Fletcher say about conscience?

Answer 15

• Four theories about conscience,
  o That it is innate
  o That it is guidance from God
  o That it is the internalised views of society
  o That conscience is reason making moral judgments
• He rejects all of these.
• Instead saying that conscience is something we do, not something we have.
• ‘There is no conscience, “conscience” is merely a word for our attempt to make decisions creatively, constructively, fittingly.’
• Conscience is your active decision there and then and is situational.