EMPIRICAL CONCEPTION OF CONSCIENCE
Theories which considered conscience as a special faculty, innate in man, have been replaced by empirical and historical conceptions. Conscience is no longerthought of as a special organ or faculty of knowledge, but rather as consciousnessdealing with a special class of objects andjudgments.The objects are conduct and character, the judgments value judgments. According to empiricists, our knowledge of what is right and wrong originates from individual and social experience. Conscience itself is, therefore, the product of social evolution and of individual development. Herbert Spencer and others suggested the hypothesis that conscience, or our elemental moral sentiments, while in some way innate in the individual, are acquired in the experience of the human race.
Modern thinkers do not regard conscience as a peculiar or separate mental or psychological faculty. It is simply an aspect of human intelligence and consciousness. Human intelligence when dealing with the nature and relations of things is called understanding. When our intelligence deals with the relations of persons and deeds we call it conscience. Our conscience or value commitments can be explainedas resulting fromour moraldevelopment,our educationandour socialenvironment.
The Customary or Conventional Conscience
We will now consider the stages in the development of intelligence as it moves towards moral maturity. Human beings are born into an existing moral environment of a society which consists of various institutions and a dominant socially accepted moral code. This code and its components exert constant influence on the impressionable minds of children in their formative years. They make certain demands on them. These are enforced by such means as punishment, reward, blame, public-opinion, and the bestowal of social leadership. This is known as the process of socialization or acculturation.
John Dewey sums up the formation of the conventional conscience in the following passage:
These demands and expectations naturally give rise to certain convictions in the individual as to what he should or should not do. Such convictions are not the outcome of independent reflection, but of the moulding influence of social institutions. Moreover the morality of a timebecomesconsolidated intoproverbs, maximsand lawcodes. It takesshape in certain habitual ways of looking at and judging matters. All these are instilled into the growing mind through language, literature, association and legal custom, until they leave in the mind a corresponding habit and attitude toward things to be done. The more important distinctionsare fixed in language, and they find their way intothe individual mind, giving itunconsciously a certain bentand colouring.
People seldom think about the social institutions and moral codes which shape their life and morality. They identify themselves with the social forms and their ideals. They do not consider the demands which the existing institutions make on them as burdens, but as reflecting their own will and deserving loyalty. However, people need to understand the grounds for belief in existing moral ideas. People who realise the significance of conventional morality become morally autonomous even when following it. But those who extend blind support to moral systems are not free.
The Independent or Reflective Conscience
Men not only follow the prevailing morality but may critically reflect upon it. They may feel that the current moral code of society no longer reflects the true needs of the situation or that it is an antiquated expression of bygone times. They may try to understand the true spirit of existing institutions and determine the sort of conduct it demands. Critical thinkers may criticize and seek reforms even in social ideals and institutions esteemed as sacred. This is the task which great moral reformers perform.
Conscience or moral sentiments can operate in situations of ordinary life also. Common people can reflect upon their immediate relationships in life to see if they are what they should be. These relationships may concern family, friends, neighbours and colleagues in office. They can regulate theirownconduct notmerelythroughcustomaryhabitsandroutinesbut by rationallyre-examining the situations.
The idea of reflective conscience involves the ‘right of free conscience’. This is the individual’s right to discover the good or to determine the ends of action on his own. Its opposite is a situation in which some good, considered imposing or beneficent, is forced on him. According to Hegel, the right of free conscience is the principle of subjective freedom which marks off modern from ancient times.
Perils of Right to Independent Conscience
At this stage, students need to recall the doctrine of moral relativism. It denies the existence or validity of objective, universally valid moral standards. It is a commonly known fact that morals and social conventions vary both across societies and over historical time. This is called therelativity of morals. Or morals are relative to a particular society and a historical period. This relativity arises from the social function of morals – or their contribution to social stability and well-being. In this functional aspect, morals have to adjust to changes of society and to currents of time.
Because there appear to be no eternal or universal standards of morals and manners, many people wrongly conclude that there is no value in a local, temporary, and slowly changing ethics. Such views lead many into ‘a head-long jettisoning of their whole cargo of morals, manners and conventions,and the bringing about of a chaos which arouses mirth or terror according to the temperament of the social observer’. It is expressed in extreme form in the famous dictum of Nietzsche: “Nothing is true, all is allowed.”
According to Wilbur Marshall Urban, “This philosophy of license, this idea that nothing is good or bad, but ourownthinkingmakes it so,invariably appears in the first flush of realisation of historical relativity and of the sense of freedom from external compulsion that comes with it. Yetit is based on such obvious fallacies that it persists only in the minds of the most unthinking.” Even if moral standards are changing and functional, they appear
as practically absolute during the time they prevail. For individuals, they represent the “pragmatic absolute.”
The idea of independence of conscience is often misinterpreted. There is no right of private judgment since moral standards and their sources have to be public. The right of private conscience means that the moral standard and its source are not the opinion of some other person, or group of persons.It is a common,objectivestandardexpressed in social relationshipsthemselves.
The idea of individual conscience which each one has to exercise independently of historical forms and contemporary ideals is misconceived. The feeling that one has to follow one’s own notion of what is right becomes an excuse for all sorts of capricious, obstinate and sentimental actions. Hegel had such ideas in mind when he observed that: “The striving for amorality of one’sown is futile, and by itsvery natureimpossible of attainment; in respect of morality the saying of the wisest men of antiquity is the only true one: To be moral is to live in accordance with the moral tradition of one’s country”.