Conscience

support, criticisms and key quotes

Johnathan Haidt → Support for Freud’s irrational conscience

post-hoc realisation → mind is incapable of reasoning rationally and only justifies decisions with rational after an initial irrational desire - totally societal

Paul Bloom → Support for Aquinas’ innate conscience

experiment on babies that demonstrates early understanding of helpfulness and evil

Piaget → support for Aquinas’ rational conscience

conscience develops with cognitive development

heteronomous → morality based on consequence and limited

autonomous → complex individual moral understanding with ability to decipher rationally

Saint Augustine → support for Aquinas’ innate conscience

vox dei → direct voice of God telling you what is good/evil

Kohlberg → support for Aquinas’ rational and developed conscience

the conscious develops alongside cognitive development

pre-conventional conscience → self interest and consequence based

conventional conscience → conforming with society

post-conventional conscience → abstract understanding of justice and rights

Freud’s conscience and tripartite mind

ego → mediator between the conflict between id and super-ego

super-ego (the conscience) → internalised expectations of authority figures (produces guilt)
id → irrational animalistic desires

conscience → irrational and developed

Aquinas’ conscience

innate → synderesis - incites good and murmurs at evil

rational → ratio - human capability to reason out the Primary Precepts

fallible → akrasia (weakness of will)

autonomous → free will means humans are in control of their morality

combination of divine law/primary precepts/synderesis

Eric Fromm → Aquinas’ support for rational conscience

authoritarian conscience → moral values come directly from irrational source of authority (external and irrational)

humanistic conscience → own moral values are discerned beyond authority (as displayed by Adam and Eve in Genesis 2)

Joseph Butler → support for Aquinas’ innate and rational conscience

Conscience is God-given innate ability to discern moral actions

prudence → caution and self interest
benevolence → selfless love for others

conscience balances these two qualities to make right decision

Joseph Fletcher → support for Aquinas’ rational conscience

conscience is the ‘verb’ of attempt to reason out what the most loving thing to do is (grounded in situation ethics)

Aquinas’ approach to guilt

real goods/apparent goods/akrasia (weakness of will) → no-one knowingly commits evil just reasoned/applied the primary precepts wrong due to ignorance or lack of knowledge

eudaemonia → everyone aims to do good - union with God

vincible error → reasoned incorrectly based on ignorance/misunderstanding of natural law (guilt)

invincible error → you reasoned correctly but consequence was beyond control (no guilt)

example: husband sleeping with twin of his wife (knowingly/unknowingly)

guilt → produced when you don’t live up to Gods will as a forceful self corrector allowing repentance of sin and reconciliation with God

Freud’s approach to guilt

super-ego → produces guilt when you don’t live up to internalised expectations as a result of conflict between super-ego and ego (decision maker)

Freud’s psychosexual development

outlines cognitive development as you grow older in the id (Oedipus complex) suggesting main factor influencing mind is sexual feelings which feeds into super-ego societal expectations

Carl Jung → critique of Freud’s psychosexual development

overly focused on sexual development and too reductive ignoring spiritual aspect of humans

Douglas Langston → support of Aquinas’ rational conscience

conscience is a faculty that can improve and grow with practice and experience

Karl Popper → critique of Freud’s tripartite mind

unfalsifiable → focus on the subconscious means there is a lack of scientific evidence

Alfred Adler → critique of Freud’s psychosexual development

importance of childhood in developing conscience but regrets sexual tensions → social tensions have a larger influence