Religion and Ethics - Conscience

Key details for the conscience part of the OCR specification including: 

  • Aquinas' theological approah to conscience (synderesis, ratio, conscientia) . 
  • Ideas concerning vincible and invincible ignorance. 
  • Strengths and weakness of Aquinas' theory. 
  • Freud's psychological approach to conscience. 
  • The id, the ego and the superego and their development. 
  • Strengths and weaknesses of Freud. 
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Aquinas and Conscience

  • Conscience = a moral faculty in decision making. A sense of right or wrong in moral decision making. 
  • Reason (recta ratio), is God given. God gives us the ability to reason - we are free beings with this gift of reasoning in moral decision making. Ratio is placed in every person as a result of being created by God. God superficially reveals to us the good and the bad (depending on the precepts of natural law and fulfilling our telos as human beings). 
  • Synderesis = an inner principle planted in all of us which pulls us towards the good and way from the bad. This bit of the conscience can sometimes be mistaken but we must follow our conscience regardless. Conscience is mistaken when we pursue apparent goods in place of real goods. 
  • Conscientia = applying reason to particular questions of right and wrong. Looks at what synderesis says and works out which path to follow. 
  • Vincible ignorance = ignorance for which we are blameworthy and which we had the opportunity to overcome. 
  • Invincible ignorance = ignorance for something which we cannot be blamed. 
  • For Aquinas, conscience is applying the knowledge of good or evil to something we might do. In order to understand whether an action is good or bad, we must first understand the primary precepts. 
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Aquinas and Conscience cont.

  • Aquinas recognised that conscience could be mistaken, but we should follow it anyway because that usually means we are blameworthy of wrongdoing (according to him). 
  • It works like this: Synderesis concludes - evil must be avoided. Ratio/reason concludes, all murder is evil. Conscientia concludes do not murder because murder is evil (reason) and synderesis says murder must be avoided. 
  • The main principle of synderesis is to do good and avoid evil (sometimes easier said than done). 
  • Conscience should be followed because otherwise we are dismissing God's command of reason. 
  • Vincible ignorance - represents a mistake of conscience for which we are blameworthy. E.g, If I go to Turkey and shoot ten people, I cannot justify this by saying my conscience told me to. Additionally, my conscience would not tell me to do something bad. If I claimed I didn't know that I couldn't kill in Turkey, I would have had many opportunities to check this for myself. 
  • Invincible ignorance - also a mistake of conscience but not necessarily because we are ignorant or pursued an apparent good - can just be a result of chance. We are not blamed for invincible ignorance. E.g if I give my friend a holiday for their birthday and they die in the plane crash on the way there - I didn't cause this to happen, nor did I know it would. 
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Strengths of Aquinas' Theory

  • Aquinas recognises that there are mental and rational thought processes which occur in moral decision making. 
  • We can all identify with conscience as a ''gut feeling'' - i.e, knowing that trying drugs is a bad idea and will have bad consequences. We have a gut feeling that this is wrong - our conscience is pulling us away from the good and sometimes it can save our lives. 
  • Recognises we can make moral mistakes, conscience is flawed just like humans. 
  • Universal - you don't necessarily have to be religious to follow your conscience (even though God gives us the ability to reason). 
  • Follows Christian tradition. 
  • Explains why young children and disabled people can do wrong - they can have a mistake of conscience and prior to 10 years old (Piaget and Kohlberg) their conscience isn't fully developed. 
  • Appeals to our use of reason. 
  • Religious safe-guard for fanaticism. While God gives us reason, he is not this ''Deus-machina'' (Paul Tillich and Bishop Robinson) he does not bark commands for us to follow so we cannot defend wrongdoing in His name. 
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Weaknesses of Aquinas' Theory

  • If conscience can be led astray, what does this tell us about God's gift of reason? 
  • Many Christians would argue, as fallen creatures we'd be more inclined to follow what Jesus has said rather than what our conscience tells us. 
  • Ignores the pull of emotions, desires and haste. What if we couldn't possibly follow our conscience because of the pull of another factor, or what if someone's life was in danger. 
  • If conscience can sometimes be mistaken, then why should we follow it if it sometimes produces bad or wrong. What if our conscience didn't work properly and even though we always followed it, it produced bad outcomes? 
  • Aquinas takes no account of sociological developments/outside influences of conscience. 
  • Doesn't say whether conscience is manufactured from experience or not. Yes, it follows the natural law (which is a posteriori), but it doesn't necessarily take into account guilt from previous experiences. 
  • Does guilt only occur if we disobey the natural law?
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Freud's Approach to Conscience

  • Freud was a psychologist and an atheist who attempted to work out how we arrive at moral decisions. 
  • He concluded that our conscience was manufactured from repression during psychosexual development - influences such as parents, teachers etc. 
  • Freud's theory is neither intuitive (instinctive like Aquinas'), nor is it rationalist (doesn't take into account human reason). Instead, it is a pre-rational function of the unconcious mind. 
  • In layers: the id is at the bottom, then the superego, then the ego, the front to interact with society. 
  • We are taught what is right and wrong through sexual repression and this is based on societal norms. E.g as a child we are told that nakedness is bad and that we shouldn't do things which are instinctive or ''dirty''. This allows our super-ego (inner parent) to develop and teaches the id the concept of guilt and the consequences of what will happen if we perform that act again. 
  • Freud analysed both human subjects and himself in a ''self-analysis''. E.g he remembered being sexually attracted to his mother as a young boy, and that repression must have reformed him and made him behave properly (i.e not act on these impulses). 
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The id, ego and super-ego

  • The id: basic and instinctive, demand instant gratification. Can be something from as small as an itch to sexual desires. The id is like the ''child'' of the conscience. It doesn't know anything but instinctive and irrational (mostly sexual desires). Imagine an itch that really needs to be scratched - we just scratch it. But if that itch was against sociological norms then we would refrain from scratching it. Furthermore, if our parents told us not to scratch it, we would learn that scratching is bad and we should refrain from it. 
  • The ego: like a sociological front that interacts with society and processes what is normal and what is not. Can control the id by sort of saying ''no, society wouldn't like that". The id is the horse and the ego is the rider, controlling where the id goes and how it acts. 
  • The super-ego: Developed as a sort of inner-parent to control the ego and the id. This comes about through sexual repression during childhood and is influenced by our outside influences such as our parents. Stops the id from acting impulsively and can make the ego feel guilt if it lets the id behave as it wishes. 
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Psychosexual development

  • ''Oral stage'' 0-1: Infatuation with our mouths, and putting things in our mouths as babies. This is where the ego develops, i.e our parents remove things from our mouths so we gradually learn that this is something society wouldn't like. If something ''goes wrong'' at this stage, we may be infatuated with oral gratification, e.g over-eating, smoking or drinking. 
  • ''Anal stage'' 0-3: Conflict arises during potty training (which should be left uninterrupted so children can further develop their ego). The ego continues to develop as children learn what's acceptable (i.e pooing on the floor is not acceptable). 
  • ''Phallic stage" 3-6: Usually a fixation around the genitals. This is where the super-ego develops (super-ego is the main result of psychosexual repression). Our parents tell us ''don't do that that's dirty'' which develops our inner parent and in turn, teaches the id that basic desires cannot always be gratified. This is where males develop the Oedipus Complex and women develop the Elektra Complex. 
  • ''Genital stage'' adolescence to adult hood: Sexual desire becomes directed at heterosexual pleasure (critcism - we're no longer all heterosexual). Fixation at other stages determines our character i.e oral stage, we may drink or smoke a lot. 
  • Important to know that this ''psychosexual development'' is essential in creating moral creatures. Otherwise, we might be murderers, child abusers or even r*pists. 
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Freud and other ideas

  • St. Paul, taught that marriage was the only acceptable place for sexual reproduction. 
  • Augustine, who'd experimented with prostitution in his youth concluded that ''men should go to their task with reluctance''. 
  • Oedipus Complex and the Elektra Complex. 
  • The primal hordes. The older men of the tribe attract the younger women so the younger men kill them. They display their heads on totem poles and are reminded everyday of their wrongdoing. 
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Freud , Strengths and Weaknesses.

  • Strengths: Gives a significant role to the conscience in moral decision making and its role to direct us to perform at a higher standard. 
  • Guilt plays a part in our ethical decision making, even if it's not based on sex. 
  • Freud's stress on the importance of parents developing our morality is also convincing. Those who have absent parents, or parents who teach them that its normal to do bad things, often end up doing bad things themselves. Explains why people behave odly if they haven't been brought up correctly. 
  • Weaknesses: Unrepresentative of society since the majority of Freud's subjects were self-selected, middle class women, or himself. Feminists are critical of the primal hordes because its too masculine and treats women as sexual objects. 
  • The theory is quite thin. 
  • Karl Popper argues that conscience is not verifiable or falsifiable so why should we follow it? 
  • Conscience can vary from person to person, so following conscience becomes meaningless. 
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Additional Approaches

  • Butler argued that conscience is the means by which an individual makes a moral decision. Every human being has the ability to reflect on moral issues. The conscience diverts us away from self love and towards the love of others. Whereas Aquinas argued that the conscience was a faculty of reason, Butler viewed it as more intuitive, manufactured from experience. He viewed that the conscience must be obeyed in all circumstances, whether it was right or not. 
  • Newman also viewed conscience as intuitive, but he argued that conscience was the voice of God. Aquinas believed that God gave us the gift of reason and supernaturally revealed to us the natural law, but Newman believed that conscience was God telling us what to do in moral-decision making. Since conscience is the voice of God, we must follow it, otherwise we are straying away from what God is telling us. However, what if we follow our conscience and it results in disaster?
  • Piaget and Kohlberg believed that conscience was developmental and manufactured from experience. They argued that before the age of 10, a child's conscience was immature (Aquinas agreed with this), and that this is why they made mistakes. Through learning about the world about what we should and shouldn't do by the age of 10, children learn about social rules and how best to act in society. This is called autonomous morality. This means the child is less dependent on others for learning about morality. 
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