Conscience is the feeling that certain actions are inherently wrong. It can be God-given or developed through reason and learned behaviors. The superego controls desire and imposes moral precepts on the id. Some people may lack a conscience due to genetic accidents.
Conscience tends to be defined as the feeling that can make a person believe that certain actions, or failures of actions, are inherently wrong. When a person ignores these feelings, they usually feel guilt or remorse. Philosophers, religious leaders, psychologists, and a variety of others have tried to determine the source of those emotions, and many come up with different answers.
In many Judeo/Christian/Islamic god worshiping religions, conscience is a God-given structure; something that people have with us from birth. It is still up to parents to help shape a child’s behavior by teaching what is “right and wrong.” Catholics define the age of seven as the age of reason, in which a child has the facility to understand this difference and knows enough about sin not to commit it.
Even though consciences are God-given in many religious ways, very young children rarely seem to listen to theirs. A child who wants another child’s toy can simply take the toy. Parenting helps your child understand that people shouldn’t just take what they want. This may take some children a few years to learn.
Many people talk about the “little voice in the back of their neck” that makes them feel with extraordinary conviction that an action committed or not committed can be wrong. The little voice can grumble, complain, or make a person feel harassed when they act in a way that might not be considered right. This leads quite naturally to the first psychological explanation of consciousnesses.
For psychologists like Sigmund Freud, the inner voice was the superego, the set of rigid moral precepts that helped control desire and take on id aspects. The superego is the sum of things learned early in life about right and wrong that impose themselves on the id to allow the self or ego to function within the constraints of a particular society. A person with little superego control is considered id-driven.
Some believe this feeling is best described as the voice of reason. This was the opinion of Thomas Aquinas and many other philosophers, though they may differ on the source. Reason is God-given to Thomas Aquinas, and therefore consciences are God-given. Humans have the capacity to develop reason, however, and do not necessarily do so; therefore reason remains a structure that must be exercised and developed. Acting conscientiously means acting on decisions based on reason.
An interesting forward move occurs when Thomas Aquinas discusses people who have wrong consciences and make wrong decisions based on wrong reasoning. He claims that this may not be the person’s fault if he hasn’t learned enough to know what is right or wrong. That idea could be applied to the modern sociopath, who is said to act without having any emotional connection to right and wrong. Perhaps the sociopath had the ability to apply reason hampered at an early age.
This idea that right from wrong should be taught is found in many philosophical, secular and religious theories. Learning about reason, society’s moral code, or what constitutes right and wrong lead people to that “inner voice” that tells them when they’re about to make a mistake. This can be considered intuitive, especially if someone is used to hearing that voice, but has become intuitive through a series of learned behaviors.
Conversely, if conscience is seen as a fully developed, innate trait, a person already has an implanted moral code and truly comes into the world with a sense of morality. Whether this is considered from a religious perspective or from an anthropological and social perspective, this sense can be one of the remaining animal instincts, oriented towards human survival and the maintenance of the social structure. The “innate” theory does not take well into account people who appear to be born without a conscience, the so-called “bad seeds” of society.
Increasingly, however, such bad seeds, especially those children who have not been abused or badly parented, are seen as sick rather than bad and appear to have lost a crucial innate instinct – perhaps through a genetic accident – which would give them a moral code. What is not clear is the religious perspective on this mentality.
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