Conscience

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CONSCIENCE

Doubtless from the earliest times in which groups established social customs, or mores, and enforced them, members of such groups who were tempted to violate these mores could almost feel the disapproval of their fellows and hear in their own minds a protesting outcry, perhaps some primitive equivalent of "No!" or "Don't!" In the early eighteenth century such inner voices or feelings were described as edicts of one's moral sense or of one's "conscience." This kind of account of these restraining influences became explicit with the development of faculty psychology, which involved the view that there are different faculties of the human mind responsible for different capacities or abilities which the mind seems to exhibit. Reason was thought of as the rational faculty, emotion as a passional one, and volition as a faculty that enables us to reach decisions and make choices. The moral faculty was thought by some, the earl of Shaftesbury and Francis Hutcheson, for example, to operate through feelings. For instance, a feeling of repugnance would tend to be aroused by the thought of doing anything immoral—anything in violation of the mores—and a feeling of approval by the thought of acting virtuously.

In contrast with this moral-sense type of theory, Samuel Clarke and Richard Price, among others, thought that it must be something akin to reason or the understanding which enabled us to distinguish right from wrong. Joseph Butler termed this faculty of the mind "conscience," and in more recent times this term has become the common one.

Modern behaviorists, to be sure, would not write of conscience as a mental faculty; they refer instead to "learned modes of reaction to stimuli." When one has been conditioned to respond in certain standard ways which are widely and strongly approved, one tends to find that one can break with such approved behavioral norms only after a genuine struggle and a stiff volitional conflict. In any case, whether we speak of the voice of conscience or of the voice of our group or of learned blockage and interference patterns, we often find that there are inhibitions to be overcome before we can break with the mores of our peers.

It has been suggested that a policeman, upholding the law, functions as a kind of government-supported externalized conscience. His mere presence in uniform suffices to warn us not to break, for example, the speed law that we are already bending a bit. Even animals below the human level can be trained to feel the force of such an externalized conscience. Cats, for example, can be trained not to sleep on the couch when humans are in the room. But it is difficult, to say the least, to teach them not to do so when no human observer is present to their senses. With human children and adults, by contrast, it is possible to develop an internalized conscience, which, even in the absence of all enforcers, will remind them, and even stimulate them strongly, not to do certain prohibited actions and to do certain required ones. The driver who stops his car at red traffic lights only when he sees or suspects that an officer is nearby has, like the cat, only an externalized conscience about this type of act, whereas one who habitually stops is, as we say, acting conscientiously—obeying, perhaps unconsciously, his internalized conscience.

That "the voice of conscience" is often effective seems clear, but it is also clear that it can and often does lose its effectiveness. A dutiful son may well adopt many of the mores of his father for a time and then gradually abandon them. If a person persists in violating his conscience, it will grow decrepit, bother him less and less effectively, and it may soon cease to deter him at all.

Conscience as a Reliable Guide

As children many of us were taught that the voice of conscience is the voice of God and, hence, completely reliable. Some would claim, in more sophisticated terms, that although God gave us free will and does not infringe upon our freedom of choice, he nevertheless continues to lend us moral support. He gives us, through conscience, a means for distinguishing right from wrong. If we follow the guidance of conscience, we shall do our duty and act rightly. If we act contrary to its deliverances, we shall surely act wrongly.

There are, however, many difficulties with this kind of account and, indeed, with any other which claims that conscience is a sufficient guide to moral conduct.

First, the consciences of different people, whether members of the same or of different societies, often differ radically. Conscientious objectors to war and volunteers for wartime service usually disagree strongly as to the rightness of a given war. Cannibals do not share the conscientious objections to eating human flesh that vegetarians do, and both these groups differ from those who feel it is morally permissible to eat animal but not human flesh.

Second, there seem to be exceptions to all the edicts of conscience. Even within groups whose members share, say, a conscientious prescription against deliberately taking a human life, the exceptions that the various consciences allow to individuals vary greatly from one person to another. Lev Tolstoy, and presumably some Quakers, would insist that his conscience forbids the taking of a human life under any conditions. By contrast, although many of us verbally would fully accept the commandment not to kill, we would be likely in practice to find ourselves approving some acts of killing, for example in self-defense or in defense of others, and disapproving of some avoidances of killing, for example in a very deserving mercy case.

Third, conscience fails to provide guidance for many important and even some crucial moral questions. Many problems that we confront are so complex that we frankly have very little idea, and certainly no confirmed judgment or deliverance of conscience, as to which alternative is most worthy of being chosen. In many such cases, where getting adequate knowledge in the time available before a decision must be reached is impossible, we know in advance that we would be only too happy to do what is right if we could identify, with some reasonable degree of probability, the right alternative. A situation of this sort must frequently arise for people who cannot pass the decision on to someone else. The president of the United States, for example, cannot avoid the responsibility for important decisions that must be made—very often on vastly less evidence than he would like to have. Similarly, there are many difficult problems to be decided by those of us who are less highly placed, problems where the decision will not indeed be world-shaking but where it will affect a number of lives in important ways. We often sweat with the desire to solve a difficult problem in the right way but are unable, in the time available before a decision must be taken, to find out which way is the right way. In complicated cases the relatively simple prescriptions of conscience tend to prove quite inadequate.

It is not that the prescriptions of our conscience are worthless; they are often of value in reminding us of the moral views which have been taken by other members of our peer group. Awareness also of the edicts that spring from the consciences of others with different backgrounds not infrequently throws light on our own problem. But in complicated and novel cases, the edict of another's conscience cannot provide us with certain knowledge as to what ought to be done.

Sources of Deliverances of Conscience

Psychologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists have gathered empirical evidence as to various sources of the deliverances of conscience. Many of the edicts of our conscience seem to have come to us while we still rested at our mother's knee. These were usually simple in form but quite effective for many years. Others came from our fathers, from teachers, from preachers, from lecturers and writers, from friends whom we respected. This wide variety of the sources of the edicts that now emanate apparently from our own consciences explains many things about them: their vagueness, their variability, their changing authority over us. As suggested by behaviorists, at least some of them rest on conditioned responses instilled in us at an early age by repetitions we no longer remember.

Examination of a particular edict of conscience throws significant light on "our inner voices." Suppose we warn our sons, ages four and six, to stay off a railway trestle near our home. We say with great emphasis, "Never go out on that trestle, no matter what." One day the younger boy pursues his gay red ball onto the trestle. The older boy rushes to him and pulls him off the trestle just before a train crosses it. Will we punish him for breaking our "absolute" rule? Obviously not. Our consciously instilled rule, now a command of conscience, has its values, positive and negative. It needs supplementation as soon as increasing maturity permits rational consideration. And to this phase anyone who has attained knowledge and discretion should surely move on.

Universalizability of Moral Prescriptions

Since the edicts of conscience have pedestrian empirical sources and are subject to exceptions, it was natural for Immanuel Kant to insist, through his categorical imperative, that every valid moral principle must hold universally: "So act that you can will the maxim or principle of your action to be a universal law, binding on the will of every rational being." This requirement has two facets. First, for an act to be moral it must be done not on whim or impulse or as a mere reflex response to stimuli, but in accordance with some moral principle or maxim. Second, this principle must be one that the agent is willing to have universally adopted. This requirement that a person should act only on a principle that he is willing to have universally adopted seems to introduce undesirable psychological factors that might tend to vary radically from one person to the next. Thus, a pessimist like Arthur Schopenhauer might approve of universal suicide and be willing to have everyone else do so, whereas an optimist might be willing to have everyone work toward increasing the population. Such a formulation of the universalizability principle would thus lead to incompatible moral edicts.

To eliminate such psychological factors and to state the principle in a way closer to Kant's intent, Richard M. Hare urges that a moral principle, to be applicable to a person A, must also be applicable in like circumstances to any similar person B. Although Hare's intent seems clear, he does not specify the degree of similarity required. Complete identity would make the principle useless. On the other hand, it seems clear that Hare was not suggesting, for example, that because it is right for A to make love to his wife, it is also proper that B, who is like A in various respects, should also make love to Mrs. A. Perhaps the universalizability thesis is best stated as follows: If it is right for A to do an act of kind X in a set of circumstances C, then it is right for any B who is like A in all relevant respects to do an act of kind X in circumstances like C in all relevant respects. So stated, the principle is analytically and thus necessarily true. But whether we can ever know in practice that both sets of circumstances and both agents are alike in all relevant respects is highly doubtful. It would be difficult, if not impossible, even to specify these respects. But we do know what is meant by this prescription, and we sometimes know with a fair degree of probability that the required likenesses are present.

Because the universalizability principle is analytic, it is necessarily true. But it is an "If … then …" statement: If A should do X in C, then B should do Y in D, where the similarities between A and B, C and D, and X and Y meet the requirements previously mentioned. Quite aside from the difficulties of knowing whether or not these requirements are met, the statement tells us only that if its antecedent is true, its consequent is also true. But to know the antecedent to be true—that A ought to do X in C —we must turn to experience for an answer. To know anything to be good on the whole, we must know if its existence (or occurrence) is preferable to its nonexistence. To know any act to be right, we must know that no possible alternative is preferable to it. Such preferability presupposes empirical knowledge of values. The possibility of such knowledge is a matter of controversy, but many, including the present writer, believe it to be attainable.

Bibliography

works of historical interest

Aquinas, Thomas, Saint. "Conscience, Question 17, Articles 1–5," and "Synderesis, Question 16, Articles 1–3." In Truth (Quaestiones Disputate de Veritate), translated by J. V. McGlynn. Chicago: H. Regnery, 1952–1954.

Balguy, John. The Foundation of Moral Goodness. London: John Pemberton, Part I, 1728; Part II, 1729.

Baylor, Michael G. Action and Person: Conscience in Late Scholasticism and the Young Luther. (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, 20) Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1977.

Butler, Joseph. Five Sermons Preached at the Rolls Chapel and a Dissertation upon the Nature of Virtue. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983.

Cicero. De Finibus. Translated by H. Rackham. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1914.

Cicero. De Natura Deorum. Translated by H. McGregor. Hammondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1972.

Clarke, Samuel. A Discourse concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion and the Truth and Certainty of the Christian Revelation, 2nd corrected ed. London: Knapton, 1706.

Hutcheson, Francis. An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. London, 1725.

Jonsen, Albert, and Stephen Toulmin. The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.

Kant, Immanuel. The Moral Law, or Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Translated with analysis and notes by H. J. Paton. London: Hutchinson, 1948.

Potts, Timothy C. Conscience in Medieval Philosophy. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1980.

Price, Richard. A Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals. London, 1758.

Shaftesbury, 3d Earl of (Anthony Ashley Cooper). An Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit. London: Bell, Castle, and Buckley, 1699.

more recent works

Andrew, Edward G. Conscience and Its Critics. Protestant Conscience, Enlightenment Reason, and Modern Subjectivity. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001.

Broad, C. D. "Some Reflections on Moral-Sense Theories in Ethics." PAS 45 (1944–1945): 131–186.

Fingarette, Herbert. Self-Deception. London: Routledge & Keegan Paul, 1969.

Hoose, Jayne, editor. Conscience in World Religions. Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999.

Hursthouse, Rosalindk Gavin Lawrence, and Warren Quinn, editors. Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and Moral Theory: Essays in Honour of Philippa Foot. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.

Jacobs, Jonathan. Choosing Character. Responsibility for Vice and Virtue. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.

Kohlberg, Lawrence. "Conscience as Principled Responsibility: On the Philosophy of Stage Six." In Conscience: An Interdisciplinary View, edited by Gerhard Zecha and Paul Weingartner. Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1987.

Kohlberg, Lawrence. Essays on Moral Development, Vol. 1: The Philosophy of Moral Development. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981.

Langston, Douglas C. Conscience and Other Virtues. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.

Nussbaum, Martha. The Fragility of Goodness. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Raphael, D. Daiches. The Moral Sense. London: Oxford University Press, 1947.

Ross, W. David. Foundations of Ethics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939.

Ross, W. David. The Right and the Good. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1930.

Ryle, Gilbert. "Conscience and Moral Convictions." In Conscience, edited by John Donnelly and Leonard Lyons. Staten Island NY: Alba House, 1973.

Slote, Michael. From Morality to Virtue. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Smith, T. V. Beyond Conscience. A Critical Examination of Various Doctrines of Conscience. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1934.

Charles A. Baylis (1967)

Bibliography updated by William O'Neill (2005)

Encyclopedia of Philosophy