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AO1: Aquinas’ theory 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.
Conscientia describes the entire process of the conscience, where we then 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.
Conscience is the whole process of synderesis and conscientia together. Conscience is the means by which we achieve our telos.
Guilt. Our reason knows which actions are good and which are bad, and causes us to feel guilty. This is because deep down, we know through our reason if we have done something bad.
Aquinas says this is how the conscience ‘witnesses’, ‘binds’ and ‘torments’ us.
Vincible & Invincible ignorance. We shouldn’t feel guilty for all bad things we do though – if we do bad due to ignorance but we couldn’t have known better, then that’s not our fault. Aquinas calls that ‘invincible ignorance’ – ignorance that could not have been prevented.
If we do something bad out of ignorance, but we could and should have known better, then that is our fault. Aquinas calls that ‘vincible ignorance’ – ignorance that could have been prevented.

AO2: Modern scientific rejection of telos (Aquinas)

Since Francis Bacon in the early enlightenment, telos has been rejected as metaphysical and unempirical.
Modern science explains the universe through atoms, energy and forces, not purpose.
There is no space in our scientific understanding of the universe for anything like a purpose to exist.
Sean Carroll concludes that purpose is not built into the universe’s ‘architecture’.
Aquinas’ ethics presupposes that telos exists within human nature, to orient us towards knowing the primary precepts.
Evolution would explain this through a herd species being programmed with social instincts like empathy and awareness of social dynamics like fairness and reciprocity.
This could explain the apparent intuitiveness of precepts like protecting life and social order.
On the modern scientific view, these are not objectively ‘moral’ orientations from a God, they are just what is evolutionarily advantageous to our species.
So telos appears obsolete.

Counter

Physicist and theologian Polkinghorne defends the empiricism of purpose.
He argues that science investigates the ‘what’, e.g., what laws of physics exist, but not why we have any laws at all, especially ones fine-tuned for our existence.
On this view, science does point to the need for an ultimate explanation of purpose, which is beyond the limits of empiricism to fully understand.

Evaluation

However, even this more contemporary development of purpose cannot survive modern empirical critique.
Max Tegmark argues science may one day explain why the universe exists, reducing the ‘why’ to non-teleological concepts.
Or, Russell could be right that there is no ‘why’: the universe could be a brute fact.
So, final causation is an unnecessary unscientific concept.
The laws of nature are a mystery, but Polkinghorne risks an unempirical God of the gaps fallacy in assuming the explanation must be teleological.
Until we have a clear observation of change which requires telos to explain, the enlightenment rejection of aristotelian final causation as obsolete is justified.
What Aquinas assumed to be the rational apprehension of God’s precepts through synderesis could just be the evolved ape’s awareness of its evolutionary programming.

AO1: Freud’s theory of the conscience

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.

Guilt for Freud is a response we learn in childhood when disobeying authority figures.
When being disciplined for misbehaviour, children feel guilt and shame and associate it with the action they did.
Later in life, those same feelings of guilt can be triggered by the super-ego when we do something or even think about doing something which goes against our conditioning.

Freud’s theory of psycho-sexual development explains how we acquire this dynamic between the id, ego and superego. Freud thought children had to learn to control the Id in stages. If self-control is not learned at each stage, it can lead to problems later in life.
Oral stage – Babies interact with the world through putting things in their mouth.
Anal stage – children must learn to control going to the toilet – they can control too much or little.
Phallic stage – Oedipus/Electra complex develops
Latency stages – 6-puberty – gender roles learned, sexual desire develops and is learned to be controlled/repressed.
Mature genital stage – Controlled sexual desires result in a desire for love and marriage. A person now has a fully developed conscience where the ego controls the Id with reference to the superego.

AO2: Freud’s empirical validity

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 said Freud’s theories were ‘unfalsifiable’ and thus not real science. Freud’s theories do not make predictions which could be wrong, which is the hallmark of genuine science for Popper.

Counter

However, when Popper made this critique, he also emphasised he wasn’t saying there was nothing of value in these theories, just that they needed to be subjected to proper scientific scrutiny and experiment.
Paul Bloom is a contemporary psychologist. He accepts that many of Freud’s ideas are ‘off the wall’. The Oedipus complex is completely rejected by modern developmental psychologists and very few of Freud’s ideas about the causes of mental illness are still taken seriously.
But Bloom still thinks Freud has important and useful insights.
Contemporary research does suggest that Freud was right that we have little awareness about the unconscious origin of many of our emotions and desires.

Evaluation

Some of Freud’s ideas have some core validity.
For example, it makes sense that ancient society would worship a totem as a representation of social order. But it’s not credible to think all humans have an inherited memory of guilt, that’s unscientific.
It makes sense that a boy knows it needs its mother’s attention, and would be jealous of his father when taking that attention away. But it’s strange and unnecessary for Freud to sexualise that dynamic.
So Freud takes his ideas too far, but that doesn’t mean we should dismiss them altogether.
Contemporary psychologists like Piaget are more empirical and have justified some of Freud’s central contentions, the main one being that morality and moral development results from social conditioning.

AO2: Moral variation

Fletcher argues that cross-cultural moral variation is a weakness of Aquinas and a strength of psychological accounts like Freud’s.
Aquinas claimed that conscience involves the ability of reason to know the primary precepts, to guide us towards our good end (telos).
This faces the issue that it doesn’t appear humans have the same moral compass, because different cultures have different moral views.
The problem deepens because disagreement is not random but tends to fall along cultural boundaries.
This makes culture and conditioning the better explanation of our moral intuitions, rather than synderesis or telos.
Such scientific accounts, e.g., of Freud and Skinner, appear to have greater explanatory power than Aquinas’.

Counter

Aquinas would point to the 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.
This is evidence for Aquinas’ view that God designed human reason to recognise the basic moral truths of natural law through synderesis.
Aquinas can then explain away moral disagreement as original sin and corrupt cultures which create a habit of turning away from our telos.

Evaluation

However, science provides better explanations of the core moral views found in all cultures.
Dawkins argued our moral sense partly came from evolution programming us with empathy to care about social order, other people, reproduction, education, 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.
A culture which allowed killing and stealing would fall apart.
So, no supernatural explanation of cross-cultural moral codes is needed.
We shouldn’t believe conscience is God’s design directing us towards our telos then.
It’s better explained by the nature and nurture that goes into human moral decision making.
Aquinas’ views are a reflection of his medieval cultural perspective, not a genuine morality.

Question preparation

Revision paragraphs:

AO1: Aquinas’ theory of the conscience
AO2: Modern scientific rejection of telos (Aquinas)
AO1: Freud’s theory of the conscience
AO2: Freud’s empirical validity
AO2: Moral variation

Question types:

Questions could focus on:

Aquinas’ theological approach to the conscience
Ratio
Synderesis
Conscientia
Vincible & invincible ignorance.
Freud’s psychological approach to the conscience.
Psycho-sexual development.
Id
Ego
Super-ego
The conscience explained by:
- Culture
- Environment
- Genetic predisposition
- Education
Guilt (Aquinas and/or Freud’s views)

How convincing is Aquinas’ theory of vincible & invincible ignorance? [40]
Focused question: on vincible and invincible ignorance

AO1: Aquinas’ theory of the conscience
- Focused on vincible and invincible ignorance – but explaining how it relates to his theory of conscience: we have an innate ability to know the primary precepts (synderesis), which causes feelings of guilt if we disobey them.
- However – sometimes it’s not our fault when we violate the primary precepts. If we do something wrong unintentionally, due to ignorance – then Aquinas says whether we are responsible for it and should feel guilt over it depends on whether our ignorance was vincible (we could and should have known better) or invincible (we couldn’t have known better).
- It only makes sense to feel guilt and be responsible for bad actions done due to vincible ignorance. E.g. whoever was in charge of the Grenfell tower. It’s unlikely they intended it to happen – but they could and should have known better that it might have happened.
AO2: Modern scientific rejection of telos (Aquinas)
- If we lack a telos – then synderesis is undermines, and then we can’t understand moral responsibility based on any supposed in/vin-cible ignorance in the application of primary precepts.
AO2: Freud’s empirical validity
- Freud would challenge Aquinas empirically, but faces his own empirical issues, which challenges the coherence of his challenge.
AO2: Moral variation
- This suggests there is no objective grounding for the morals of the conscience – they either come from evolution or just practical social convention.
- In that case, responsibility cannot be determined by the nature of our ignorance when violating primary precepts.

Does Freud make more sense of guilt than Aquinas? [40]
Split focused question: on Freud’s views on guilt, and Aquians’ views on guilt

AO1: Aquinas’ theory of the conscience (moderate AO1 – focused on Aquinas’ views on guilt)
AO2: Modern scientific rejection of telos (Aquinas)
- If Aquinas is wrong about telos, he’s wrong about synderesis and then about the cause of guilt.
AO1: Freud’s theory of the conscience (moderate AO1 – focused on Freud’s views on guilt)
AO2: Freud’s empirical validity
AO2: Moral variation
- Evidence for Freud’s explanation of guilt as a conditioned response to super-ego violation rather than Aquinas’ explanation of guilt as caused by rational apprehension of our violation of the precepts of natural law.

Weirdly worded questions:

Does the conscience exist at all, or is it just an umbrella term for things like culture, nurture, genes, etc. [40]
Focused question: on the scientific view of conscience

This is the idea that there isn’t a set ‘thing’ in us called the conscience, because it’s instead a cluster of natural phenomena.
So this question is really: can the conscience be reduced to natural forces or has it got some relation to the supernatural.
In that sense it can be taken as a standard Freud (natural) vs Aquinas (supernatural) question.
Technically Freud focused more on nurture than nature, so you could argue evolutionary biology adds something important to Freud to complete the umbrella concept.
AO1: Freud’s theory of the conscience
AO2: Modern scientific rejection of telos (Aquinas)
- This question is science vs religion – so this evaluation works great as arguing against Aquinas’ grounding for conscience in telos.
AO2: Freud’s empirical validity
- Always good to show nuance for Freud if agreeing with him.
AO2: Moral variation
- Argument against Aquinas’ claim conscience is more than an umbrella term for natural causes.

“Conscience is separate from reason” – Discuss [40]
Focused question: on Freud’s account of conscience.

AO1: Freud’s theory of the conscience (full AO1)
- Accounts for conscience through conditioning, not reason.
- Once the ego has formed, reason can inform its choices. But that’s the only role reason has. E.g., reason could play a role in helping us think through the consequences of acting on our ID, and how much guilt we would feel if we did. This could help us to control ourselves. But reason is not the source of our conscience nor its moral views. They come from society and authority figures during childhood, for Freud.
AO2: Freud’s empirical validity
AO2: Modern scientific rejection of telos (Aquinas)
- Aquinas: reason plays a crucial role in the conscience as designed by God in: 1. Intuitive awareness of the primary precepts (through reason’s ability of synderesis) and 2. Application to gain secondary precepts.
- This criticism then objects to Aquinas’ grounding for synderesis, which is telos.
AO2: Moral variation
- Further evidence for Freud’s separation of conscience from reason view, and against Aquinas’ connection of them through synderesis.

Also, if you like the ‘primary precepts outdated’ critique, that could work – especially in Aquinas focused essays, or critical comparison essays.

Aquinas’ precepts do not come from synderesis, innate in us from God – they are just what Aquians reasoned to be useful for people in his culture.
This is because they were, in fact, useful for his time period.
The idea they came from God was just in his imagination.
So, our feelings of guilt are not triggered by disobeying an innate moral compass in us created by a God, but by going against social norms created by philosophers like Aquinas.
This is a sociological argument which supports Freud’s side.