The Value of Conscience (AQA A-Level Religious Studies): Revision Notes
The Value of Conscience
Introduction to evaluating conscience
When assessing conscience as a moral guide, we need to consider whether it is genuinely useful for making moral decisions. This involves examining if conscience helps us reach clear decisions or leaves us confused and uncertain. The value we assign to conscience also depends on what outcomes we expect from our moral decision-making.
A key challenge in this evaluation is that conscience is understood differently by various scholars and traditions. What works as a moral guide in one interpretation may be problematic in another.
Seven perspectives on conscience as a moral guide
1. Conscience as the 'voice of God'
This view sees conscience as a direct communication from God, guiding believers towards right action. However, this interpretation faces significant challenges:
Problems with this view:
- There is no reliable way to verify whether the 'voice' you hear is genuinely God speaking to you rather than your own thoughts or desires
- Different people claim to hear conflicting messages from God on the same moral issues
- This makes conscience highly subjective - what one person believes is God's voice may differ completely from another person's understanding
Exam tip: When discussing this view, consider both religious perspectives that support it and philosophical criticisms about verification and reliability.
2. Conscience as internalised values of society
This psychological and sociological view suggests conscience reflects the moral values we absorb from our society, functioning like an 'inner parent' that enforces social norms.
Potential benefits:
- Conscience naturally unites society by ensuring members share common values
- It provides a mechanism for maintaining social cohesion and order
Significant problems:
- This model works regardless of whether a society's values are morally good or bad
- If you believe a particular society's collective morality is evil (such as a society that accepts slavery), then you cannot approve of the conscience mechanism that sustains those values
- This type of conscience cannot challenge or criticise existing social values - it simply reinforces them
- It lacks the capacity for moral reform or progress
This raises an important question: if the role of conscience should be to challenge unjust social norms, then a conscience that merely reflects society's existing values has limited moral worth.
3. The individualised conscience (Kohlberg)
Kohlberg's theory presents conscience as an inner demand that moral decisions should be consistent and universalisable. This gives a strongly rational account of moral thinking.
The rational approach:
- Decisions should apply consistently across similar situations
- Moral principles should be universalisable - applicable to everyone in similar circumstances
- This represents the highest stage of moral development in Kohlberg's framework
Key limitation:
However, we must question how many people are actually capable of this sophisticated level of moral reasoning. Kohlberg's highest stages of moral development require abstract thinking that may be beyond many individuals' capabilities.
4. Reason as conscience (Aquinas)
Aquinas understood conscience as the practical application of reason to moral situations. This rational approach has important strengths but also significant weaknesses.
Problems with reason as conscience:
- Reason is not infallible - it can make mistakes
- Aquinas himself provided examples of how conscience can be mistaken in two ways:
- Ignorance of the moral law relevant to the situation
- Lack of full knowledge of the relevant facts (for example, not knowing that a 'widow' still has a living husband)
- Conscience is influenced by passions and emotions, which can distort rational judgement
- Social conditioning affects how conscience operates
- Following conscience based on faulty reasoning can lead to seriously harmful actions
Because conscience can be mistaken, we need some higher standard by which to judge what our conscience tells us. Conscience alone is not a sufficient moral guide.
5. Feelings of guilt - are they useful?
Guilt feelings are commonly associated with conscience and deserve separate consideration.
Potential benefits of guilt:
- Guilt can warn us when our actions are morally wrong
- Because guilt feelings are unpleasant, they motivate us to avoid repeating wrong actions in the future
- This creates a learning mechanism for moral behaviour
Significant problems:
- What makes us feel guilty and what motivates us to change varies widely between individuals
- We may feel guilty about things we do not actually need to change
- Guilt feelings may not align with objective moral standards
Example to consider:
Conscience may make someone feel guilty about being homosexual. Whether those guilt feelings are appropriate depends entirely on your beliefs about homosexuality. This shows that guilt alone cannot determine moral value.
6. Can conscience 'guide' at all?
Some philosophers challenge the entire concept of conscience as a guide based on determinism.
The determinist objection:
- If all behaviour, including moral conduct, is determined by prior causes, then we lack free will
- Without free will, we cannot choose how to behave
- If we cannot choose, then no 'guide' (including conscience) can influence our actions
- The concept of conscience as a guide becomes meaningless
This represents a fundamental philosophical challenge to the value of conscience, though it depends on accepting determinism.
7. The subjectivity problem
Conscience is fundamentally private and subjective, which creates problems for its value as a moral guide.
The core issue:
- Only you know what your conscience is telling you to do
- If you claim to be 'following your conscience' when doing something others disapprove of, only you know if this claim is genuine
- This justification has little or no value to others unless they happen to approve of your action
Implications:
- The reason for your decision (following conscience) may be irrelevant to whether it was right or wrong
- Consequences of actions may be the only element that matters for moral evaluation by others
- Conscience cannot serve as a public justification for behaviour
The problem of defining conscience
A fundamental difficulty in evaluating conscience is that there is no agreed definition of what conscience actually is. Different academic disciplines approach conscience from their own perspectives:
Different disciplinary approaches:
- Sociologists focus on social conditioning and collective values
- Psychologists emphasise developmental stages and psychological mechanisms
- Theologians stress divine guidance and religious authority
- Each discipline tends to work within its own conceptual framework
A proper definition of conscience needs to include multiple dimensions:
Requirements for a comprehensive definition:
- Reason: Moral views should not be irrational or arbitrary
- Social value: Most people live in societies, so conscience must account for social dimensions
- Critical capacity: The ability to judge and criticise society's moral norms (for example, challenging slavery)
- Religious values: For those who believe in God, conscience must relate to the divine in some way
- Alternative sources: For those who reject religion, conscience needs a humanistic foundation
- Human psychology: Recognition that conscience combines human instincts that can point in different directions
For most people, conscience involves one or more of these factors: rational, judgemental, social, psychological, humanistic and religious. No argument can definitively prove that any particular view is correct or takes precedence over others.
The need for a guiding principle
The central problem is that something needs to exist outside conscience itself to prevent those who trust their conscience absolutely from making catastrophic mistakes.
The danger:
Without an external standard, individuals convinced their conscience cannot err might commit terrible acts. History shows the devastating consequences when people follow conscience without any moderating principle.
A possible solution:
Perhaps what is needed is a guiding principle that most people could accept. One suggestion from virtue ethics offers: 'Do that which contributes to the flourishing of the whole environment.'
Under this framework:
- Conscience would be the various religious, social, psychological and other factors through which people come to accept and apply such a principle
- The principle provides an external standard for evaluating conscience's promptings
Remaining problems:
Even this approach has limitations:
- To be effective, such a principle would need universal acceptance
- There would always be individuals whose conscience would not allow them to accept it
- We may have to accept that no single understanding of conscience will ever be accepted by everyone
If people generally act according to their own moral presuppositions about the world, we might need to accept that no single understanding of conscience will achieve universal acceptance.
Exam tips
- Be able to discuss at least four different perspectives on the value of conscience
- Identify strengths and weaknesses of each view
- Consider how different definitions of conscience affect its value as a moral guide
- Understand why lack of agreed definition creates problems for evaluation
- Be prepared to argue both for and against conscience as a reliable guide
- Link to other ethical theories (virtue ethics, religious approaches, etc.)
- Use specific examples to illustrate abstract points
Remember!
- There is no universally agreed definition of conscience, making its evaluation complex
- Each view of conscience (divine voice, reason, social conditioning, etc.) has significant limitations as a moral guide
- Subjectivity is a major problem - only individuals know what their conscience tells them
- Conscience may not be infallible; it can be mistaken due to ignorance, passion or social conditioning
- A comprehensive understanding of conscience must include rational, social, psychological and potentially religious dimensions
- Some external standard may be needed to prevent conscience from leading to catastrophic moral mistakes