hello to you I do hope you're well welcome to this a level religious studies video I'm Ben Wardle and today we are comparing religious and non-religious understandings of the conscience we will also be evaluating the value of conscience as a moral guide so plenty to talk about today I think the key question that we'll be considering is this question of whether conscience is the infallible voice of God within us or whether it is the internalized voice of society within us so for example St Augustine believed that the conscience is the infallible voice of God within us and so of course for him the conscience is very important as a moral guide he would say we are obliged to follow it because it has Divine Authority whereas for someone like Freud he believed that the conscience is actually the internalized voices of authority figures from our childhood so from our parents and our grandparents when they were telling us our for telling us what to do when we were little and he says we then actually carry those voices with us throughout our lives and when we do something that our parents or grandparents wouldn't have approved of we actually feel guilt even as adults so when you don't finish your plate of food at a restaurant for example you might feel guilty because your granny once told you that you need to eat all of your vegetables don't you know there are children Starving in the world so it's really interesting to consider where does the conscience Act actually come from and then what Authority does it have for human beings today so as I say we're going to compare those different religious and non-religious ideas about conscience and we're going to evaluate them as well so that we can make a judgment about the value and importance of conscience as a guide for moral decision making so let's get started shall we by asking what I think is quite an important question which is what actually is the role of the conscience so what does it do what purpose does it have what function does it fulfill I think it's also interesting to consider what do you think the conscience is you know when you hear that word what image what ideas actually come to mind is it of some little voice box in your head telling you what to do is it the angel and devil on your shoulders or have you got a different understanding of conscience you know please do let me know in the comments what does come to mind when you think of conscience but let's actually think about the role of it some people would say that the role of conscience is to help you decide what should be done before making a moral decision it might also be there to inform moral agents whether their actions were right or wrong so for example it may lead to a feeling of guilt after the event when you've done something that you then reflect upon and you think actually I shouldn't have done that or could it be that it demands a particular course of action so you know what is the role of the conscience does it come into play before before you've done something whilst you're doing it or is it after you've done something or could it be all three of those so let's just start to think at the start of today's video what actually is the role of the conscience what purpose does it have what function does it fulfill so we're going to start by looking at our religious understandings of the conscience and for each one I'm going to give you your ao1 key knowledge about this understanding as well as your ao2 evaluation points so we will be looking at the strengths and the criticisms of each understanding and then after we've looked at the religious understandings we're going to look at the non-religious understandings as well and we will be looking at Freud fromom and Colberg so we will then be able to compare these religious and then the non-religious understandings so you can make a judgment about what the conscience actually is and what role it has to play in moral decision making so we will be starting with St Augustine who has probably the most most traditional understanding of conscience that it is the innate voice of God and so he believes that it has Divine Authority and that we are obliged to follow it because it is literally God speaking to us I always imagine this one has being a bit like God having a microphone and then you've got a little speaker in your head and he's telling you do this do not kill don't do that you know it's very much about God speaking directly to you St Thomas aquinus then has another religious understanding in and of course we know him from natural moral law and we will be referring to Natural moral law today because his understanding of conscience is that it is the god-given faculty of reason so we'll be looking at his cinder's principle and the idea that God has given us this ability to think reflect and consider and that he wants us to be responsible for our moral decisions and we need to do good and avoid evil in our moral decision making we will also be looking at Bishop but you may not have met him yet on the course but we will be meeting him today and he believed conscience is a god-given reflective principle so it is our ability to reflect on our actions and he sees the conscience as our guide and our governor which is governed by two things by prudence and benevolence and we'll talk about them more later and then our fourth religious understanding will be Joseph Fletcher who of course we know for his situation ethics ethical Theory and his idea of conscience is very much grounded in situation ethics we can't talk about his idea of conscience without talking about his situation ethics because he did not see the conscience as a thing he was very unique in his understanding very different from Augustine aquinus and Butler because he does not see the conscience as a thing but he actually sees it as a verb so it's not a noun it's not a thing but it's a verb it is a action it's a label and he saw conscience as the process it is our attempt to make a decision and as I say that fits in very well with his situation ethics and his idea of the agapic calculus so plenty to talk about we're going to start with St Augustine who of course we're very familiar with because of his ideas on original sin and the influence that he's had on the Catholic church so his idea of the conscience as I say is your classic traditional Christian understanding that your conscience is the innate voice of God within you so as I say for St Augustine the conscience is literally the innate and remember innate means within voice of God and he believed it has been placed into the human Mind by God so it amounts to an innate knowledge of God's laws so as I say I always think of this as being a bit like God having a microphone and then speaking directly to you he's put a little uh speaker in your mind and then he's got a direct communication with you where he's telling you do this don't do that behave yourself uh so he therefore believes that our conscience informs us and it is infallible in what it tells us about what is right and wrong so of course we need to listen to the voice of God within us it should be our authoritative moral guide so for St Augustine and this is a very simple very straightforward understanding the conscience is the innate voice of God within us so what are the strengths of this understanding what can we say is a real strength of his idea here well we can say it is consistent with scripture which of course is always important for Christians we read in St Paul's letter to the Romans for example that conscience is a witness to the requirements of the law so we can see consistency between Augustine's idea here and what we read in scripture we can also then say it is supported by later theologians schlak for example writes that conscience is the voice of God within an original Revelation from God so again he saw it as this voice of God within us that has Authority and that provides us with instructions so our strengths are very much grounded in that idea that it's consistent with scripture but then there is also later support from theologians so Augustine does have a bit of backing however we can of course criticize and critique his idea of conscience so we can identify flaws in his thinking and problems with his theory so the first one of course is that it depends on belief in God if you don't believe that there is a God you are not going to believe that conscience is the innate voice of God so when we compare with Freud from and Colberg for example they would find this to be an absolutely ridiculous idea that there is some kind of innate voice of God that there's a little speaker in your head that is broadcasting God's laws to you and providing you with a commentary on everything that you're doing we could also say that the amount of moral evil in the world seems to suggest that not everybody hears the voice of God within them so you know have some people's speakers ran out of batteries because it seems to be that if God was speaking to everybody why are people doing moral evil why is there so much moral evil in the world is God selective for example in who he speaks to are are people ignoring him you know are we actually saying that all these people doing moral evil they did have the innate voice of God within them and they chose to ignore it surely then you know God needs to turn up the volume he needs to start shouting down that microphone a little bit louder if we build on that we could say that different people have different ideas of the good don't they and that's quite a nice link to met ethics as well so that seems to suggest that God says different things to different people if God was actually broadcasting the same message to everybody then surely when we all get together and debate moral issues we would all agree but of course we know don't we people don't all agree on moral issues so does that suggest that God is giving different people different messages because the idea that there is an innate voice suggests there should be consistency and uniformity in our moral thinking and in our moral decision- making but the fact that there isn't seems to undermine the idea that there is this one inate voice that everybody is hearing people seem to be tuned into different frequencies don't they they seem to be hearing different messages and then a really interesting one is does this not compromise free will we know that Augustine prioritizes free will one of his most famous quotes is that for a runaway horse is better than a stone but actually could we argue that if conscience is the voice of God speaking to us can we actually be called morally free now of course you could argue well yes because you then choose to follow that voice but you could still argue I think does this not compromise that idea of free will that we are autonomous decision makers so lots to think about there in ter terms of St Augustine's classic traditional idea of the conscience as the innate voice of God we are going to look now at aquinas's idea of the conscience which has got a little bit more development and is very different in terms of Austine said that conscience is the voice of God within us whereas aquinus says it is a god-given ability so God isn't telling us what to do he has given us the skills to decide for ourselves he has given us the skills to think for ourselves so he has given us the tools rather than the instructions if that makes sense and this very much of course as I've said before is you know rooted in his idea of natural moral law and of course we're also going to link in Aristotle here because reason and the importance of reason for human beings is something that ainus gets from Aristotle we know Aristotle's hierarchy of souls is that idea that humans are at the top of the hierarchy because they have a rational Soul they have the ability to use reason and think for themselves and aquarius's idea of conscience is very much rooted in as you can see that god-given as he sees it ability to reason to consider things to reflect and to make judgments so as I say it's really important to remember whenever we're talking about aquinas's view on conscience that he developed natural moral law and that his idea of conscience very much fits into that biger picture of natural moral law so make sure you refer to Natural moral law in any essays you're writing that talk about aquinus and his view on conscience so he begins his starting point and again we know this from natural moral law with what he calls the ceres's principle the idea that good should be done and evil should be avoided and he says that that governs all human reasoning he wrote that ceris is in the rational part of a human agent it is a natural disposition of the human mind now of course we can evaluate whether all people do have this disposition to do good and avoid evil but remember that is aquinas's starting point that God has implanted within us the sinderesis principle to do good and avoid evil and then human reasoning is all about choosing and making that effort to pursue good to do good and avoid evil in our moral decision making so he argues that what is in innate for humans is not the voice of God telling them what to do so this is where he is different where he differs from Augustine but it's actually The god-given Faculty of reason so as I say we don't have a little speaker in our head where God is broadcasting instructions to us instead he's given us the ability to reason he has given us the tools and the skills to make these decisions and make these judgments for ourselves so we have to use practical reason and again you can see really heavy Aristotelian influence here and we have to then make those decisions for ourselves we make those judgments and aquinus says that if we use reason and we think of that sinderesis principle we seek to do good and avoid evil we will arrive at and we will understand the five primary precepts of natural moral law so they will be self-evident to us but he says conscience then has an important role to play in applying them through the secondary pre preps to particular situations so for aquinus the conscience has a really important role to play because it is this god-given faculty of Reason God has given you the ability to think reflect and make judgments so you need to use your conscience to make moral decisions to understand the secondary precepts and to follow them now really importantly here ainus believes that the conscience is therefore fallible and that it can be mistaken and that is of course because it is not the innate voice of God speaking to you giving you those direct Divine commands it is actually a gift that God has given you it is a skill that God has given you and so it is ultimately you doing the thinking and it is you making the decisions so your conscience can make a wrong decision because human beings are fallible human beings are flawed and so we are going to make wrong decisions so for example and this is an example he gave if we are not fully informed about the facts of the case when we use our god-given faculty of reason to make a moral judgment we might not make the right moral judgment because there has been ignorance in our decision making but really importantly aquinus says that the conscience should still always be followed so even though it is bable even though it can make mistakes we should still follow it and the reason is the conscience is the best moral guide that we've got so even though it is not infallible it is the best moral guide that we've got and so he says what the conscience dictates is true to the individual concerned is therefore true to you and so truth must be followed so although the conscience is fallible it should be followed because it is the god-given faculty of reason so what do we think of this do we like this idea do we think this is better than Augustine's can we identify any flaws in aquinus is thinking well I've said that the strength of his understanding is that it's more realistic because it considers the conscience is not fallible he takes into account that it's something that we use that is very much human and we do make mistakes so he acknowledges that the conscience can sometimes be wrong so of course that does then explain why we do see evil in the world because people do make mistakes because remember they are fallible we could also say that his emphasis on reason safeguards human free will because remember the conscience is not God giving you direct instructions it is a god-given faculty of reason it is a god-given ability a gift to reason and so we could say that then safeguards free will because ultimately it is on you what decisions you then make reason allows us to make freely chosen moral decisions and then importantly we then have moral responsibility for those decisions as well in terms of the criticism though again we can say well it depends on belief in God again doesn't it his ideas are grounded in theism so if we make it to not it link to religious language we can say this works very well if you play by the rules of the Christian language game but anybody outside that form of life is not going to find this to be a satisfactory understanding of conscience because it's totally dependent on belief in God and the idea there is a God who has given you this god-given faculty of reason we could also say that a quietus is wrong to assume we all act according to the cinder's principle so remember that is integral not only to Natural moral law but also to his understanding of the conscience you could say actually when we look at the world around us how many people are driven by the desire to do good and avoid evil can we just say that all the moral evil we see is the result of ignorance we could say actually he could be misunderstanding human nature there and then finally we could refer to the fact that many people act irrationally so remember it's about the we have this god-given faculty of reason but what about all those people that we don't actually see using reason or exercising reason so what does that tell us surely that tells us God has picked and choosed who he's going to give this faculty of reason to why is it that that faculty of reason is much more developed in some people than others so for example when we look at Colberg he sees the conscience of the highest stage of moral development that not everybody reaches we all go through the precon ventional and the conventional stages of moral development but only some people reach the postconventional they develop their individualized conscience why is it that some people are much more reasonable than other people surely if God had given us this ability this faculty of reason we would all have it in the same quantity why is it some people are much better at reasoning than other people so again more criticisms to be thinking about and obviously to be writing about in your essay we are going to move on now to the third religious understanding which is actually quite similar because Joseph Butler who was a Christian Bishop believed that the conscience is a reflective principle placed within us by God as a guide and a governor so again for Butler the conscience is something given to us by God it is not his voice speaking to us it is actually something given to us again it's a bit of a tool that he has given us and he has equipped us with this time however uh Butler doesn't use the word reason he uses the word reflective and he sees the conscience as a guide and a governor that again he says we need to follow so as I say you know you might not have met Bishop Butler before so let me introduce you to him he was a theologian philosopher and a bishop so again he's part of that religious language game and he believ that conscience is a reflective sense of right and wrong that is placed within us by God and he see that as a natural guide and here's a really important phrase for you as a proper Governor so again it is our duty to follow it we need to be following it so again when we are evaluating the importance of conscience as a moral guide later on for our theologians they do think conscience is an authorative moral guide because although it can be wrong although it could be mistaken as ainus acknowledges it still originates from God it has been given to us by God that therefore it has Divine Authority we could also no not we could Butler would also say excuse me that it allows us to reflect morally on what we have done in the past and what we are to do in the future so again for quietus it's about using reason for Butler it's all about reflecting it's that ability to step back and think right what am I about to do should I be doing that and what have I done should I have done that so obviously you can then learn from what's happened in the past and of course the point here is always going to be again linking in with Aristotle's hierarchy of souls this is something uniquely human you know we don't see your pet dog standing back and thinking should I have done that although having said that I have seen my dog look quite guilty when he's stolen food from the kitchen but we won't get into animal Psychology today the point is this ability to reflect and to reason is typically seen as unique to human beings and so our question is does that come from God is that a reflection of us being made IM magod day with this special role in creation so for Butler it is a reflective principle and he sees that as god-given and so it should have Authority for you as a guide and a governor now he believed that it is based on two governing principles of human behavior prudence and benevolence now if you studied virtal ethics you should be familiar with the virtue of prudence which is all about cautiousness and it's all about thinking about things so in terms of what Butler believes Prudence is our love of self so it is thinking about our self and it's also then about benevolence it's about thinking of others though for Butler the conscience is about balancing these two things it's about balancing the need to think about yourself and prioritize yourself with thinking about other people and prioritizing other people so it's about balancing those two governing principles of prudence and benevolence and so in order to function morally you need to think about yourself you need to exercise prudence and that cautiousness that is about self-interest alongside benevolence which is where you're thinking about the needs of others and about your love for others so what do we think then no let's not evaluate yet do excuse me I'm getting too excited let's actually look at what Butler himself wrote whilst we think about whether we like his idea of conscience so just a couple of key quotes from Butler always nice to drop in a little quote in your essay just to ensure the examiner is giving you those top marks so he said that there is a principle of reflection in men so that's a really great phrase if you just want to include a sound bite as I call them in your essay I'm actually going to highlight that and this is where the whole PowerPoint could all go wrong and it will all collapse into chaos but I'm going to give it a go because that's a brilliant line he calls it a principle of reflection there we go in men so that's a great little quote you can drop into your essay you can say Butler describes the conscience as a principle of Reflection by which they distinguish between approve and disapprove their own actions and of course that is what reflection is all about isn't it it's about reflecting on your actions and you know thinking was that the right thing to do will that be the right thing to do he says we are constituted so we are required to reflect Upon Our Own nature so again that reflects the fact that for Butler the conscience is a reflective principle he said this faculty so the conscience tends to restrain man from doing mischief to each other so the conscience stops you causing harm and leads them to do good and I think that is very very similar to what aquinus said isn't it and his cinder's principle that it's about doing good and avoiding evil he said it is by this faculty natural to man that he is the moral agent so again this is what makes you a moral agent your ability to reflect on the things that you will do and the things that you have done and I think a really important line here is that he says natural to man this is something natural to us because it has been placed within us by God he also says and this is I think my favorite quote from him actually it therefore belongs to our condition of being it is our duty to walk in that path and follow this guide so that shows you doesn't it the authority Butler gives to the conscience he says it is our duty to be reflective to use that reflective ability given to us by God and we have a duty to follow this guide which reflects the fact he sees it as our guide and Governor so let's have a look at our strength and weaknesses shall we you could say a strength of this is that it makes us morally responsible for our actions because again we are not being told what to do we have been given ability to make that judgment for ourselves we've been given the ability to reflect on what we will do and what we have done by balancing prudence and benevolence so as I've put here we have been gifted the ability to reflect on our actions by God this reflects free will of course which is very important for Christians and importantly it means we can be held accountable for our actions so we can link that in nicely with the Free Will and moral responsibility topic on the AQA ethics specification as well the idea that we have the ability to reflect and so we can then be held accountable we also have criticisms though of course we could say some people do not have a balance between prudence and benevolence some people are overly selfish and only consider themselves so you could actually critique Butler by saying he's misunderstood human nature and again you could do the same for a aquinus you could say he is you know seeing um too much good in people really you know he is assuming that people people are all considerate of others whereas we could say actually the state of nature our Natural State as human beings is actually quite selfish Thomas Hobbs for example said our natural state is a war of all against all that the life of man is solitary nasty brutish and short so actually are human beings naturally benevolent is that something that we instinctively are or do some people have a lot more selfishness than selflessness so we want to be thinking about human nature is he right that people do seek that balance between prudence and benevolence or actually could those scales be distorted and then another point we could say moral evil in the world suggests that not everybody has this inner reflective principle so again we can use the evidence around us we can say every crime that we see is actually evidence against the god-given conscience because if we all had a conscience that informed us of Good and Evil surely there would be a lot less evil in the world surely there would be a lot less crime there would be a lot less harm being caused so does that tell us that there is not a conscience or that actually the conscience isn't working very well and so does God need to take it back to the warehouse and you know get some DIY work done on it because clearly it needs improving in order to be more effective so there we go a look at Butler's idea there and that is then our free traditional shall we say Christian idea of the conscience covered we've started with Augustine we've looked at aquinus and he focus on reason and then we've looked at Butler and the idea conscience is a reflective principle we are now going to look at Fletcher's quite unique shall we say Christian understanding of the conscience and he sees the conscience as a verb so if you're also studying a level English language you will absolutely love this section of the video because we're going to be talking about nouns and verbs and when I did a level English language I think that was all I spent my time doing reading articles and circling the modal verbs and the pronoun choices but yes it takes me back to a level English days um so we digress do you excuse me reminiscing here about my own a-level experiences for Joseph Fletcher he sees conscience as a verb so he sees conscience in a very different way he does not see it as a thing we've been given but as a process that we complete or as something that we do so as I've put here Fletcher does not see the conscience as a thing that we do or um nobe he does see it as something we do sorry do excuse me do H ignore what I've just said there let me start that again bletcher does not see the conscience as a thing that we have but it's a process as something that we do and you have to always consider this in the context of his situation ethics he rejects the traditional idea of the conscience as an inner faculty or thing in it itself so he says it is not a thing it is not an innate inner faculty so he would not like he would dismiss Austin's idea aquinas's idea and Butler's idea he would not like those ideas instead he said the conscience is merely a word and I'm going to get the highlighter again out again now he says it's merely a word for our attempts and that's an important word to make decisions so it is our attempt to make a decision it is not a thing that we have it is not a skill that we've been given it is our attempt to make decisions so in other words it is a label um and he says that conscience is something that we do when we are deciding and calculating how love of course is best served in a situation so remember he said that Love's decisions are made situationally and that is at the core of situation ethics and so he says conscience is the label that we give to attempts to decide what is the most loving thing to do so conscience is what we do when we're using the agapic calculus but it is not a thing in itself and he said this is very famous what he said here actually the traditional error lies in thinking about conscience as a noun instead of a verb so he says that is the mistake to think of it as a thing rather than as something we do that is a mistake and he said that mistake reflects the the fixity and the establishment mindedness of all love ethics as contrasted to uh love ethics so he said that when people see the conscience as something that is fixed and as something that we have that reflects the fixity and what he called the establishment mindedness of all law ethics of legalism which of course he didn't like he said drop the legalist love of laws and follow only the law of love so he said this is another example of these law ethicists who are too fixed in their thinking who are too rigid who are too traditional in their thinking he said with love ethics we don't say that you have a conscience conscience instead is merely a word for our attempts to make decisions creatively constructively and fittingly so conscience is a verb it is something that we do it is a label that we give rather than a thing that we have and remember whenever you're talking about fletch's idea of the conscience you want to link it back to situation ethics to his criticism of law ethics and his Pursuit Of Love ethics and the idea that Love's decisions are made situationally so what do we think of this idea as I say it's quite out there isn't it it's quite radical when you compare it with those traditional Christian ideas of the conscience so we could say a strength of this and actually I really like this first one is that it resolves the problem of the conscience not being a physical feature of the brain by explaining it as a thing we do rather than as something that we have so I think a really great criticism of um aristot not Aristotle of Augustine aquinus and Butler is that if you go for an MRI scan or you create a model of the brain we don't have an area of the brain that we can label as conscience we can't actually find it and we could say fet resolves that because he says that the conscience isn't a thing that we have in our brain it is something that we do so it's not a feature of the brain that God has implanted but it's actually a label that we give to a mental process and you could say that resolves the problem of conscience not being found as of yet as a physical feature of our brain you would surely expect if Augustine was correct that when you go for an MRI scan they're going to see a little microphone box in your brain and they're going to hear God booming down the microphone speakers but of course with Fletcher he resolves the problem that conscience hasn't been found as a physical feature of our brains because he says it's actually a thing that we do it is a verb rather than something that we have you could also say that a strength of this is that it fits within his situation ethics he actually shows how the consci functions as a verb of course in the development of his situation ethics so you could say that his understanding does work and he has shown it to work as part of his ethical framework which we call situation ethics and also again another really strong strength in my opinion is that it shows why different people do make different moral decisions remember we use that criticism when we're talking about Augustine especially but I think we can apply it to the other um Christian thinkers as well the fact that people do cause moral evil they do make many wrong choices and we can say well Fletcher explains that because remember he is seeing the conscience as a label for our attempt to make decisions so of course there are going to be people who make the wrong decisions and of course people are going to make different moral decisions because they're making their moral decisions on a situational caseby casee basis remember Love's decisions are made situationally not prescriptively so his understanding of the conscience does take into account and does account for the vastly different ways in which people make moral decisions and judgments however what criticisms have we got here well we could say that again it depends on belief in God remember one of his um presuppositions one of his four presuppositions of situation ethics is positivism which is belief in a god of love so again this idea is still grounded in the Christian religion although of course many critics would say that situation ethics is not very Christian it also depends on using situation ethics you know we can't separate his understanding of the conscience from his ethical Theory so if you don't like situation ethics the chances are you won't like his idea of conscience because it is grounded in applying love it is grounded in his ethical Theory and his use of the agapic calculus and then finally we could say it contradicts traditional Christian understandings of the conscience as a faculty or is something we've been given by God so just think of how Augustine aquinus or even Butler would be reacting to hearing about fletch's understanding of the conscience you could say that it really does contradict those traditional Christian ideas so that could be seen as a weakness of his understanding of the conscience because many Christians do believe that it is a thing that we have it is a noun that has been given to us by God so I just wonder now actually after considering those four Christian ideas about the conscience which one you do think is the most convincing which one do you think makes the most sense maybe have a go at ranking them from number one the one that you think is the most convincing down to number four the one that you think has the most flawed and again would be great to hear what you think in the comments below but for now we are going to move on to our secular understandings of the conscience so we are going to consider three different non-religious ideas about the conscience we're going to look at Freud's idea that conscience is the internalized voice of authority figures that makes us feel guilt we're going to look at fr's idea that conscience develops in a social context as both authoritarian and humanistic and then finally we're going to look at Colberg idea of moral development and that conscience is the highest level of moral development and again we will look at your ao1 your key understanding your key bullet points for each of these and then we will evaluate them we'll look at the strengths and the criticisms of each before we again think about making a judgment as to which one is the most convincing which provides the most successful explanation but of course the headline Point here with these secular understandings is that they challenge that traditional Christian idea that the conscience comes from God because these understandings all say that the conscience is the result of our upbringing that it's the result of our society and that it is in the case of Colberg the highest level of our moral development so a really different understanding of the conscience to that that is held by traditional Christians so let's get started with Sigman Freud who is a very interesting character to say the least as I'm sure you will agree if you've studied him especially if you do in Psychology I'm sure you've got a lot you could say about Sigman Freud and his ideas the idea that we're going to focus on here is his idea of the conscience which he believed is the internalized voice of authority figures from your childhood that we experience as a feeling of guilt so just to put this into context Freud had this idea of the brain this was his model for the mind that there were three key components the super ego the ego and the ID and when we're talking about the conscience we are talking about the super ego because according to Freud the conscience is an aspect of the operation of the super ego and what this means is that the rules and regulations given to us by authority figures when we are children such as our parents our teachers and our grandparents are internalized and what that means is we're like sponges really we soak up their instructions we take in the messages that they've given us and we internalize the rules and expectations that they had of us and so as we then grow up we take those rules we take those instructions and we take those expectations with us so in our childhood and we know this from Research into Child Development we are like sponges we take in so much information don't we and that information our environment has a massive influence on us it shapes us and it molds us into who we grow up to be and so Freud is saying that in childhood we internalize the instructions the rules and the expectations that are given to us by our authority figures and by authority figures we mean the people that raise you your parents your grandparents your carers your teachers as you get that little bit older and importantly he says that when we don't follow them we feel guilt and that's not just when we're children but it's all the way through our lives so because those voices are internalized they stay with us and so when we do something that authority figures from childhood would disapprove of we feel guilt even as an adult so that is how our in internalized voices from childhood then act as our conscience and that is primarily through feelings of guilt and as they say the classic example I always think of is that as a child you know if your granny said to you if you've not finished all your plate you can't have pudding you need to eat everything on your plate you need to eat all the peas finish all your vegetables or you can't have any pudding and they might have used the line there are children without any food in the world you need to eat all your food and so let's fast forward to youve being really full you've gone out for dinner You' really full you've had a big burger you've got chips you've got you know loads left on your plate and you're absolutely full but you feel really guilty about not finishing the meal because you've got your granny's voice in your head saying you need to finish your plates there are children without any food in the world and you feel really guil about not finishing your meal and that is an example Freud might say of that internalized voice from your childhood giving you a feeling of guilt and that for him is the conscience so importantly it is not the voice of God speaking directly to you via the microphone and the speaker it is actually the internalized voice of authority figures from your childhood so just to break this down a little bit more conscience is the functional part of the super ego as I say so it's the part that judges and threatens you with punishment so it holds you to account really for your actions and Freud says that the super ego is the internalization of external parental Authority and that then carries with you you carry that with you and it gives you feelings of guilt throughout your life so just like your parents did when you were a child your super ego your conscience then tells you off judges you and gives you orders as an adult all the way through your adult life so what do we think of this understanding well we could say that it gives us a really helpful understanding of the origins of guilt because so many of us do feel guilt don't we and it shows us where that comes from because it's caused by going against what our authority figures told us as children so it gives us really clear insight into where feelings of guilt come from we can say it also takes into account the social influences of our conscience so it reflects that our conscience is very much shaped by our upbringing and our parents and it would obviously provide an explanation for the conscience that doesn't depend on God so it explains why we feel guilt why we feel compelled to feel in certain ways or act in certain ways I should say but it doesn't require God because it shows that actually the voice is not from God it is actually the internalized voice of your authority figures from childhood however there are of course many criticisms of this Freudian understanding we could say it reduces the conscience to the wishes of your parents or authority figures from your childhood it reduces the conscience to a need for Conformity to rules and you could say is that really all your conscience is is this not quite pessimistic in terms of how Freud is understanding your conscience and of course you could also say it contradicts the idea that the conscience is from God because it's giving a very different explanation um so just something to think about do you agree with bu that the conscience is the internalized voice of authority figures of course the implication of this is that your conscience as a moral guide is just going to be feelings of guilt when you don't do what your authority figures told you to do as a child so of course your conscience as a moral guide in this sense is very different than if you believe the conscience is the voice of God speaking with with in you so it's really interesting to consider what is the implication of this for how you see the conscience and whether you think the conscience is helpful as a moral guide or is it actually something that is holding you back you know especially if you've had a difficult troubled or traumatic childhood could that have a really negative implication for example when we apply conscience to telling lies or breaking promises if as a child you were brought up in an environment where telling lies was the norm and breaking promises was the norm does this mean that as an adult your conscience will not make you feel guilty about telling lies or breaking promises so it shows us how our morality is actually shaped by our earliest formative experiences and it comes primarily from our early caregivers and authority figures so it's a very interesting insight into people's moral compasses and where they get their personal ethics from but as I say is this then helpful when thinking of the conscience as a moral guide anyway we could spend hours talking about this and we've got other things to cover so let's keep going and look at Eric from so conscience for him develops in a social context as both authoritarian and humanistic so what do these words mean what did from think well really important with from to consider the context in which he was thinking of these things because he was a psychoanalyst atheist philosopher and a Marxist and his ideas were very very much developed in the context of the Holocaust and the horrors of World War II so he was looking at what happened and he was thinking why are all these people complicit why are so many people involved in the horrors of the Holocaust and the horrors of World War II in terms of what the Nazis were doing and what was happening for example in the concentration camps and he realized that in many societies especially in authoritarian societies the key virtue is obedience and obedience is the key driver in so many people's moral decision making and their ethical thinking so as I say he believed that guilt shame the idea of conscience and also moral responsibility and general all arise out of a fear of being rejected from society because Society is based on obedience to rules and Conformity to Norms so as I say when he thinks about conscience he sees in this authoritarian sense as being about a fear of rejection from society and so a focus on obedience that people's decision making is driven by a need to obey and to conform to society so he wrote a book called on Disobedience and other essays and he said that in most social systems the Supreme virtue is obedience and the Supreme sin is Disobedience and so he said for most people guilt is the result of feeling disobedient they feel troubled because they know they have disobeyed a command that they have gone against a social Norm or a social expectation and that is what he called an authoritarian conscience when your sense of morality and your moral decision making is driven by a need to conform to follow orders and to obey social norms and authoritarian instruction and this importantly is externally imposed he said people do not think for themselves but they are driven by a fear of disobeying orders and this is how he made sense of what was going on for example with the Holocaust that people were not actually thinking as autonomous moral agents that they didn't have that ability in that context to think for themselves about what is right and wrong instead the key driving force behind their conscience if you like which is developed socially and culturally is fear it's a fear disobeying orders and so it is a desire to obey and obviously this seems quite pessimistic doesn't it that we're just reducing our conscience to a fear of Disobedience and that all art moral decision making as agents as moral agents is driven by a fear of Disobedience but there is a bit of positivity in his theory because he says we also have a humanistic conscience which he said comes from within so remember for the authoritarian conscience that is external whereas we have also got this internal humanistic conscience and he said that this humanistic conscience is driven by individual standards and not by a fear of external Authority so this is where we do have autonomy and where we can exercise individuality and he wrote this is the voice so the humanistic conscience which is within us is the voice present in every human being and it's independent from external sanctions and awards so it's not driven by external reinforcement he said we have an intuitive knowledge of what is human and inhuman what is conducive to life and what is destructive of life and that's why it's called the humanistic conscience because it's driven by this understanding of what it means to be human of what is conducive for life so what will help life to flourish and what is destructive of Life what will cause harm and so he very much sees the conscience as this dualistic struggle really between the authoritarian conscience which is external and is imposed on us by society and that need for obedience and then the humanistic conscience which is within which is driven by this impulse towards Humanity that is focused on flourishing and so for from both of these ideas of conscience have to be understood in a social context the conscience and this is the important bit for us does not come from God it is not a hotline to God it is not God speaking to you it is not a god-given ability to reason or a god-given ability to reflect it is something that develops in a social context and as he said himself the conscience is like our capacities and speech and thought and only develops in a social and cultural context so he considered and he reflected on the fact that conscience is shaped in a social and cultural context so very similar to in that sense but we could say he's much more positive and optimistic than Freud in his thinking because whilst Freud of course said that the conscience amounts to little more than following the orders of your childhood authority figures for from at least he goes further and he says we do have the option or the ability to develop that humanistic conscience so although they both consider the social influences you could say froms understanding is more optimistic so let's evaluate that you could say that he again takes into account the social influences on human beings so he does recognize that our conscience is formed in a social context this is of course consistent with bry's understanding of conscience as a source of guilt you could say from developed that by considering that that guilt is the result of Disobedience to social norms and to authorities orders you could they say he's more optimistic than Freud because his conscience is not just the internalized voice of authority figures you do have that ability to develop the humanistic conscience where you are thinking for yourself and you are driven by that human impulse and again another strength we could say is that it does not depend on belief in God the humanistic conscience explains how the conscience does exist but does not depend on theism to provide that explanation so of course you know more people might find it um an idea they can get behind and that they can get on board with because of course it's not grounded in theism it's not exclusive to that religious language game however a criticism of course is that this challenges traditional religious ideas about the conscience for aquinus for Augustine for Butler they would say the conscience is god-given it is not developed in a social context it is not about about excuse me obeying social orders it's about in Augustine's case obeying God and His laws so that leads us to our final understanding of the conscience which I'm not going to be biased but I do quite like this one that's what I'm going to say I'd like to hear your thoughts at the end of the video though Lawrence kig he saw the conscience as the highest level of moral development in a human being and really importantly he did not think everybody gets to this high level of moral development he did not believe everybody develops an individualized conscience where they develop a set of their own ethical principles that they believe in he said most people do not get beyond what he called the conventional stage of moral development where they follow laws where they follow rules and they do things that they think will get them praise from other people he said very few people actually rise to the top of the hierarchy and reach the highest level of moral development where they develop that individualized conscience where they create their own universal ethical principles that they believe in and that they stand by so so let's have a look at what he means by this um hierarchy by this process of moral development as you can see from this diagram here he believes that everybody begins as a young child in the preconventional stage and this is where your moral reasoning is very limited because of course you're only a little child and it is based on reward and Punishment so we do things we make decisions if we can describe it in that way when we're talking about a young child because we want to avoid punishment we don't want to be hold off so that is our driving factor that is what shapes our moral decision making we then as we get to the age of eight and through to 13 enter the conventional stage this is where our moral reasoning is based on external ethics so it's all about doing things that we will be praised for so following the rules at school doing good things in school because we'll be praised by teachers we'll get a certificate Etc and then also following rules so most people he says do not get further than the conventional stage of moral development which is where your moral reasoning is based on external ethics and of course you will see a similarity there with PR's authoritarian conscience the idea that your moral decision making is all about external reinforcement it's about what Will authority figures say what will Society say am I going to break a rule and get into trouble or on the other hand am I going to be praised for doing the right for following expectations for being a model student and he says most people just get to Conventional and that's it only a few select people actually climb into the postconventional stage where they develop the individualized conscience because they develop their own set of universal ethical principles and that is quite cantion in terms of having a set of universalizable ethical principles but he said very few people get there where moral reasoning is based on personal ethics rather than on external ethics or simply on a desire for reward and an avoidance of punishment so let's have a look at some of the key bullet points here just to tell you a bit of background information on Mr Colberg he was a 20th century American psychologist who was known for his work on moral development and all that that means and it's actually very interesting for us as ethic students is he studied how people develop their morality their ethical thinking how does that actually develop in a human being are you born with the ability to make complex and really wellth thought out moral decisions no that is something over time in the same way that we can track your biological development or your Social Development he was interested in tracking your moral development and he identified six stages of moral development in human beings that begins at Birth and then climbs through six stages and he broke them down into three levels they are preconventional conventional and postconventional and it is only the final stage so in that postconventional level where you could and the word is could because not everyone does develop an individualized conscience and that is where you develop your own ethics so remember not everybody develops the conscience so this is obviously very different isn't it from those religious ideas um because for Augustine aquinus and Butler everybody has a conscience whether that is the voice of God within them whether that is a god-given ability to reason or reflect for cber this is something that only a select few actually develop and the key word there is develop it is not given to you it is developed by you so here are those three stages um and the one we need to focus on is that top one the postconventional level the highest stage of moral development which is the development of an individualized conscience this is when an IND individual develops their own universal ethical principles and set of universal obligations they think for themselves and remember it's not just now about obedience it's not about reward it's not about avoiding punishment it's about thinking for yourself and um they develop their own set of universal obligations they think for themselves and don't just think of themselves they always think about the greatest good so they would do something even if it would disadvantage them because they know that there is a greater good behind it and importantly to go against these conscience leads to guilt so it will be followed even if it leads to imprisonment or personal sacrifice and as I say very few Reach This highest level because most people don't go beyond conventional which is where their morality consists of adhering to social norms and following social rules so really interesting that he's actually got some points in there that are very similar to other theories we've looked at his point there about guilt for example we see that in Freud don't we we see that in from but also his point there where they think for themselves I think is quite consistent with aquinus I think we can actually see some similarities here between what aquinus would say in terms of a great is good pursuing cinderes following those five primary precepts which are universally binding we can see in Colberg thinking here some really interesting links and connections to um other Scholars not only secular but also religious but yeah just something to consider Goldberg's idea there of moral development conscience isn't something we are given it is something that some people develop over their lives so what are the strengths of his understanding well we can say it takes into account how conscience develops and changes over time which I think is interesting others haven't really taken that into account have they he is considering how your conscience develops and for some people they don't actually fully develop a conscience and that would then explain of course why not everybody is a really moral Saint so it takes into account why there are crimes because some people are just driven by reward and Punishment and obviously the punishment isn't a strong enough deterrent for them so they commit the crime anyway it emphasizes the importance of reasoning and moral reasoning so again can we see similarities there with aquinus ideas it emphasizes autonomy of individuals and freedom of moral agents but of course he recognizes not everybody has that he knowledg is not everybody has that autonomy and that freedom because they don't actually have a conscience it is consistent with other sociological understandings that take into account the social influences on our conscience and we could say another strength is that it's more optimistic than Freud as well because we can go beyond guilt we can go beyond obedience to those authoritarian voices from our childhoods in terms of problems though we could say it challenges again the traditional religious ideas is so someone who believes conscience is the voice of God or that it is given by God would obviously challenge the idea that it's something we develop and um we could also say that it's quite culturally relative his research may not apply to all people in all societies so is this understanding applicable to all cultures so we have now looked at our religious and our non-religious understandings of conscience and I would be really interested to hear actually what do you think of them overall which do you think provides the best explanation for conscience and why I would love to hear your judgments please let me know in the comments but what we're going to do now is not that that fits on the screen H we're going to do some applications so we are going to be thinking here about applying conscience to telling lies and breaking promises so this is a great way for us to consolidate our knowledge and it's also a great way for us to develop some examples for the exam so going to think about the different understandings of the conscience and what they would say about different moral issues so application as I say to telling lies and breaking promises what is our religious understanding and we could say well for Augustine and his understanding he saw the conscience as the voice of God speaking to you lying goes against God's commands and rules of course the conscience would be against lying and you would be compelled to follow it as it is the infallible word of God for aquinus remember he he had a slightly different understanding it wasn't the voice of God it was the god-given ability to reason so you could say well using reasoning and of course using reasoning in accordance with the cinder's principle which is to do good and avoid evil you would ascertain that lying violates the primary precept of ordering of society therefore aquin's conscience would reach the rational judgment that you should not tell lies or break promises we could then of course talk about Fletcher who has a radically different understanding of cons ience he said conscience is a verb rather than a noun no action is always right or wrong of course that's the whole point of situation ethics Love's decisions are made situationally so he would of course say that conscience is just the label that we give to youth in the agapic calculus so you know we would find that he could he would justify lying or breaking promises if it was the most loving thing to do so for example lying to your partner to prevent heartbreak or Devastation that they've said do I look good in my outfit and you know it's too late for them to change you're going to say looks amazing 10 out of 10 a million dollars have a good night you know he would say well go on do the most loving thing use your agapic Calculus in terms of your psychological and sociological understandings Freud would say that if as a child your parents taught you not to lie then of course the internalized voice of your parents would tell you lying is wrong so of course you would feel guilt if you lied as an adult in terms of what would from say well his authoritarian conscience would say that it's wrong because it shows disloyalty to society doesn't it because it would therefore lead to feelings of guilt and shame because virtue is the Supreme obedience no obedience is the Supreme virtue excuse me sorry guys I clearly need some green tea um obviously if you're telling lies and breaking promises that is not showing very much obedience to society the humanistic conscience would tell you it is wrong to cause harm to others um but of course for a different reason it wouldn't tell you that it's wrong because it is disloyal it would be saying that it's wrong because it goes against that humanistic impulse it's not conducive to flourishing to be lying and breaking promises and then of course for Colberg it depends on what level of moral development hierarchy you are at doesn't it so of course you might say that telling lies is wrong because you'd be told off so at the conventional level you'd say well it's wrong because I told off if I was found out but then at the postconventional level you've developed your own ethics so you would be saying well yes it is wrong because I believe lying is a universally harmful action and so no one should lie so just to uh break that down a little bit more Augustine would say that the voice of God would be against telling lies if they go against the teachings of the Bible which reveal Divine laws and remember for him the conscience is that little speaker that is announcing those laws to you aquinus said that the conscience would inform that telling lies or breaking promises is not rational because it conflicts with the cinder's rule to do good and avoid evil it breaks the primary precept of ordering society and of course as we said Fletcher would say well it's a label it's not a thing it's a verb so decide the most loving thing in that situation and then as we said about our non-religious explanations boy would say it could lead to feelings of guilt anxiety and remorse um because of what you were told um as a child but it's important to remember for Freud that conscience applied is not a moral issue he's not seen this as a moral issue it just gives you an insight into your upbringing and the values that you were instilled with as a child which I think is a really interesting thing to remember um and then of course with our sociological understandings we've got to think about the authoritarian conscience as we have done that it would prevent you from telling lies or breaking promises because the fear of society's disapproval and that reflects social norms and structures and the Supreme virtue that is obedience and then Colberg at the postconventional level we consider not just our needs but the greater good of society we cannot universalize um telling lies or breaking promises so we should not do this okay let's have a look at a second application shall we let's have a look at adultery what do you think I'm going to give this one over to you so pause the video and have a go or if you've downloaded the power point you can print this slide off and have a go at filling it in what do you think about applications to adultery here if you think about what would our religious understandings of the conscience say what would our psychological and sociological understandings of the conscience say would they be happy with adultery or not what do you think so let's have a look shall we well let's start with our religious understandings Augustin the voice of God would speak against adultery of course as it goes against Divine Law The Ten Commandments say do not commit adultery aquinus would say that reason dictates that adultery is wrong it goes against the cinder's principle to do good and avoid evil and it breaks the precept for The Ordering of society so it leads to societal breakdown and then Fletcher adultery is not loving it's not agapic so we could say actually this is one of the issues where although he says Love's decisions are made situationally we can kind of guess what his conclusion is going to be he says that it breaks up families and breaks down relationships um however there could be circumstances when it is justifiable for example the couple are living in an unhappy marriage and they are both seeing their true love so what if they're you know both secretly homosexual for example so again with Fletcher you know it's all about in that situation remember the conscience is a label for your attempt to make the right decision to do the most loving thing uh what about our psychological understanding Freud again we'd be thinking of those feelings of guilt anxiety and remorse that would um be surfacing so remember it's about the messages you received as a child and those teachings about being in a loving relationship and being committed to your partner but of course if that's not something you saw as a child or that's not a message you were exposed to as a child then actually you might not feel guilt about having an affair when you're older because if that was normal in your upbringing could you think that that is normal or at least not feel guilt as an adult and then finally sociological and standing adultery would be seen as socially destructive because of course as we mentioned before the um order and stability of society depends on truth and honesty so for from for example the authoritarian conscience would prevent you from committing adultery because of your fear of society's disapproval for example media coverage of Those who commit adultery the front pages are always quite critical aren't they when they have um caught a footballer out as it usually seems to be um having Affair and Colberg as well the conscience will prevent you from committing adultery because it cannot be universalized so remember that highest level that postconventional level of moral development you are thinking of the greater good not just yourself and your lustful sinful evil desires so there we go all that is left to do now is to think about the value of the conscience as a moral guide so this is where we bring everything we've looked at together and we consider what what actually is the value of the conscience what role does it have to play is it helpful is it useful and of course that's something you need to think about in terms of your ao2 evaluation for the exam so let's do that let's start by asking about the value of conscience as the voice of God so you could say that this type of conscience obviously would be valuable for a theist for someone who does believe that it is the voice of God they would see it as very valuable and as having absolute Authority in their life they would see it as infallible and they would believe it's their duty to follow it however if we actually think about it more deeply this type of conscience may not be valuable if there is no way of knowing whether the voice you are hearing is God or of course why different people seems to be getting different messages from God so it does have value you could say for a theist but actually for somebody outside of that language game outside of that form of life they're going to have a lot of questions and they're not going to believe that this is a useful way of understanding the conscience if we think about the idea of conscience as internalized values conscience would seem to unite Society because its members have shared values which the conscience enforces however the problem and this is where we see the problems of the authoritarian conscience if society's expectations or if what is going on in society is wrong and everybody is just obeying and everybody is seeing uh obedience as a virtue we have a big problem don't we because people are then all going to do the wrong thing morally surely they should be thinking for themselves and that's where of course brom's humanistic conscience comes in the next one the value of Colberg individualized conscience so of course the top level of moral development the highest postconventional level we could say this understanding of conscience would be valuable as it shows the conscience is uniquely human given a strongly rational account of course however remember not everybody is capable of it so it's only useful for those people that have developed it what about everybody else what about the mere moral Mortals what do we do with them what do they do how about aquinus is reason-based conscience we could say this also shows it is uniquely human as well as emphasizing that humans are autonomous three agents however remember he said it's not infallible so it can't always be trusted and again it's based on belief in God the value of feelings of guilt so of course we're talking about Freud here we could say that um this understanding of the conscience shows that it acts as a warning and it can help to guide our conduct so it can be helpful however we could say it can lead to feeling guilt about things we should not I don't know if you've heard the phrase Catholic guilt before the idea you know that many people who were brought up in a strict Catholic Family can then feel guilt about really quite trivial things um and so you could say actually this can become a burden on somebody throughout their life uh we could say the same about being gay for example if someone's brought up in a time period before homosexuality was legalized and so as a child they received negative messages about homosexuality that could then cause them a lot of guilt when um being in a same-sex relationship themselves for example as an adult and then finally the value of conscience as a guide what is the value of conscience as a guide well I've concluded that conscience may be valuable as it guides us and helps us to reflect on our conduct Bishop Butler would certainly agree however we could say the objective nature of the conscience May undermine its value and caution against Reliance so it is on that note that I will end today's video by thanking you for joining me and asking you to please comment down below which of these ideas of conscience from Augustine aquinus Butler Fletcher Freud from and Colberg which do you personally think is the best understanding of conscience which one do you think is the most use it would be great to hear from you please do comment them in the description not in the description box below in the comment box below believe it or not but yes thank you for watching I do hope this video has been helpful have a brilliant day and good luck with all of your studies bye-bye