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Conscience - Coggle Diagram
Conscience
Aquinas' thoery of the conscience
Aquinas’
theory of the conscience involves his theory of natural law ethics
It is based on the claim that God has designed human nature with the purpose (telos) of following his moral law
Telos is the idea that a thing has a particular nature which orientates its behaviour towards its natural end or good
For human beings, this means God has designed our nature to have reason which comes with the ability to know and follow God’s natural moral law
God gave us reason (ratio)
Reason has a power called synderesis which allows us to know the primary precepts
It also has a power called conscientia, which allows us to apply the primary precepts to moral actions/situations and figure out what we should do. This is how we gain secondary precepts
The ‘synderesis rule’ is that we have the tendency to do good and avoid evil
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Counter argument
Telos is unscientific
At the beginning of the enlightenment period, scientist
Francis Bacon
realised that
Aristotle
and
Aquinas’
concept of ‘telos’ was unscientific
The modern scientific view is that the universe is just composed of atoms and energy in fields of force. There is no space in our scientific understanding of the universe for anything like purpose or telos to exist
Physicist
Sean Carroll
concludes purpose is not built into the ‘architecture’ of the universe
Human nature might behaviourally orient us, but this too can be explained by evolution
Evolution in a herd species will generate instincts like empathy. These are not intrinsically ‘moral’ behaviours from a God, they are just what were evolutionarily advantageous to our species
So again, science can explain everything about us without the need for the concept of telos – making it an unscientific concept
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Evaluation
This critique of
Aquinas
is successful because of the clear power of science
Science has transformed our world through its immense explanatory power. Although it cannot absolutely disprove telos, it does show that we have no reason to believe that telos exists.
Ockham’s razor
further justifies this approach. We are justified in believing the simpler explanation that works. If we have a scientific explanation it is simpler than those which require supernatural beings
Aquinas’
theory fails – scientific approaches are better explanations
Freud's theory of the conscinece
Freud
thinks that what we call ‘conscience’ is really just the result of the way we are raised to control our animalistic instincts
He claimed there are three parts to the human mind:
The Id
is our unconscious instincts
The Ego
is our conscious self-aware decision-making self
The Super-ego
is our mind’s memory of the social rules (our society’s morality) conditioned into us by authority figures during childhood
The conscience is just the interaction between these three parts of the mind
E.g. there’s a desire for food which bubbles up from the Id into the Ego, so you become aware of wanting food. However, your Super-ego tells you that it’s class-time right now, so you can’t eat. You then have to choose whether to obey your super-ego and feel frustrated or give in to your Id and feel guilty about breaking society’s rules
This explains conscience without reference to anything supernatural like God
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Evaluation of Freud
Freud
is not a proper scientist – he didn’t do any real experiments, he studied a small sample size of people who were not a good cross-section of society
Because of this,
Popper
(inventor of falsificationism theory) said
Freud’s
theories were ‘unfalsifiable’ – not real science. There was no way to prove them wrong because they were not based on reality
Defence of Freud's general ideas
Piaget
was a real scientist and although he didn’t agree with
Freud
on everything, he basically defended
Freud’s
central thesis – that the conscience is just the result of the way we raise children
Freud
might have been unscientific in many of his ideas, but the claim that conscience is the result of conditioning/socialisation is scientifically accurate, as shown by
Piaget
Natural law ethics and Cross-cultural moral variation
A strength of
Freud
and a weakness of
Aquinas’
approach is cross-cultural moral differences
Fletcher
argues a weakness of
Aquinas’
approach is cross-cultural moral differences
Aquinas
claimed that conscience involves the ability of reason to know the primary precepts, to guide us towards our good end (telos). But if that was true, it should be universally true of all humans regardless of their culture. We would expect to find more moral agreement
Different cultures have different moral views – e.g. some countries are more religious and thus ban euthanasia, but other countries allow euthanasia
Not only is there disagreement, it tends to fall along cultural boundaries. Culture and social conditioning is therefore the better explanation of what determines our moral compass, not telos. This was the view of psychologists like
Freud
and
Skinner
. Their scientific approach looks stronger than
Aquinas’
Coutner
Aquinas
would disagree – he would say that even though there’s disagreement there is still a core set of moral views all cultures share which is very similar to the primary precepts
Everyone agrees that killing for no reason is wrong, everyone agrees an orderly society is good, reproduction is good, education is good
Moral disagreement could just be the result of sinful and corrupt cultures and original sin
Evaluation
However, we have other, better, more scientific explanations of the core moral views found in all cultures
Richard Dawkins
argued our moral sense partly came from evolution – which programmed us with empathy to care about other people, reproduce, educate, etc., all of which is evolutionarily advantageous for a herd species like us
Furthermore, there is just a practical requirement for a society to exist. Imagine a culture started allowing killing and stealing – it would fall apart and end. So no special explanation of cross-cultural moral codes is needed
Conscience isn’t God’s design directing us towards our telos then. It’s from evolution, social conditioning and social practicality
Aquinas’
supernatural explanation of explain cross-cultural moral agreement is an unnecessary hypothesis
Aquinas’
whole theory of natural law is better explained by scientific analysis of the nature and nurture that goes into human moral decision making
Freud’s
scientific approach is a simpler and better explanation of our moral compass than
Aquinas’
theological approach
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