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Conscience

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Not to be confused with conscious.
For other uses, see Conscience (disambiguation).
François Chifflart (1825–1901), La Conscience (after Victor Hugo).

Conscience is an ability or a faculty that distinguishes whether one's actions are right or wrong. It leads to feelings of remorse when a human does things that go against his/her moral values, and to feelings of rectitude or integrity when actions conform to moral values. It is also often viewed as the attitude which informs moral judgment before an action is performed. The extent to which such moral judgments are, or should be, based wholly in reason has been a matter of controversy almost throughout the history of Western philosophy. Commonly used metaphors refer to the "voice of conscience" or "voice within."

Religious, secular and philosophical views about conscience

Although there is no generally accepted definition of what conscience is or its role in ethical decision-making, three overlapping factors are generally relevant.

  1. Religious views
  2. Secular views
  3. Philosophical views

Religious views

Religious views of conscience usually see it as linked to a morality inherent in all humans, to a beneficent universe and/or to divinity. The diverse ritualistic, mythical, doctrinal, legal, institutional and material features of religion, may not necessarily cohere with experiential, emotive, spiritual or contemplative considerations about the origin and operation of conscience.[1] In some Hindu-derived spiritual systems, for example, conscience is the label given to the accessible phenomena composed of knowledge and empathetic understanding that a soul acquires as a consequence of the completion of karma over many, many lifetimes.[2] In the Zoroastrian faith, after death a soul must face judgment at the Bridge of the Separator; there, evil people are tormented by prior denial of their own higher nature, or conscience, and "to all time will they be guests for the House of the Lie."[3] The Chinese concept of Ren (Confucianism), indicates that conscience, along with social etiquette and correct relationships, assist humans to follow The Way (Tao) a mode of life reflecting the implicit human capacity for goodness and harmony.[4]

Seated Buddha, Gandhara, 2nd century CE.The Buddha linked conscience with compassion for those who must endure cravings and suffering in the world until right conduct culminates in right mindfulness and right contemplation.

Conscience is also a major feature of the Buddhist religion.[5] In the Pali scriptures, for example, Buddha links the postive aspect of conscience to a pure heart and a calm, well-directed mind: "when the mind is face to face with the Truth, a self-luminous spark of thought is revealed at the inner core of ourselves and, by analogy, all reality." [6] The Buddha also associated conscience with compassion for those who must endure cravings and suffering in the world until right conduct culminates in right mindfulness and right contemplation.[7] Conscience thus manifests in Buddhism as unselfish love for all living beings which gradually intensifies and awakens the mind to a purer awareness.[8]

The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote in his Meditations that conscience was the human capacity to live by rational principles that were congruent with the true, tranquil and harmonious nature of our mind and thereby that of the Universe itself: "To move from one unselfish action to another with God in mind. Only there, delight and stillness...the only rewards of our existence here are an unstained character and unselfish acts."[9]

The Islamic concept of Taqwa is closely related to conscience. In the Qur’ān verses 2:197 & 22:37 Taqwa refers to "right conduct" or "piety", "guarding of oneself" or "guarding against evil".[10] Qur’ān verse 47:17 says that God is the ultimate source of the believer's taqwá which is not simply the product of individual will, but requires inspiration from God.[11] In Qur’ān verses 91:7-8, God, the Almighty, talks about how He has perfected the soul, the conscience, and has taught it the wrong (Fujoor) and right (Taqwah). Hence, the awareness of vice and virtue is pre-built into the mechanism of the soul, allowing it to be tested fairly in the life of this world, and tried, held accountable on the day of judgment.

Last page of Ghazali's autobiography in MS Istanbul, Shehid Ali Pasha 1712, dated A.H. 509 = 1115-1116. In this work Ghazali recounts how, once a crisis of epistemological skepticism was resolved by "a light which God Most High cast into my breast...the key to most knowledge."

In Islam, according to eminent theologians such as Al-Ghazali, although events are pre-ordained (and written by God in al-Lawh al-Mahfūz, the Preserved Tablet), humans possess free will to choose between right and wrong, and are thus responsible for their actions; the conscience being a dynamic personal connection to God enhanced by knowledge and practise of the Five Pillars of Islam, deeds of piety, repentance, self-discipline and prayer; and disintegrated and metaphorically covered in blackness through sinful acts.[12] Marshall Hodgson wrote the three-volume work: The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization.[13]
Many Christians consider following one's conscience to be as important as, or even more important than, obeying human authority.[14] A fundamentalist Christian view of conscience for example might be: 'God gave us our conscience so we would know when we break His Law; the guilt we feel when we do something wrong tells us that we need to repent.'[15] This can sometimes (as with the conflict between William Tyndale and Thomas More over the translation of the Bible into English) lead to moral quandaries: "Do I unreservedly obey my Church/priest/military/political leader, or do I follow my own inner feeling of right and wrong as instructed by prayer and a personal reading of scripture?"[16] Many contemporary Christian churches and religious groups hold the moral teachings of the Ten Commandments, or of Jesus, as the highest authority in any situation, regardless of the extent to which it may be covered by legislation.[17]

Nikiforos Lytras, Antigone in front of the dead Polynices (1865), oil on canvas, National Gallery of Greece-Alexandros Soutzos Museum.

This dilemma of obedience in conscience to divine or state law, was demonstrated dramatically in Antigone's defiance of King Creon's order against burying her brother an alleged traitor, appealing to the "unwritten law" and to a "longer allegiance to the dead than to the living".[18]

Conscience, in Catholic theology, is "a judgement of reason which at the appropriate moment enjoins [a person] to do good and to avoid evil".[19] Catholics are called to examine their conscience daily, and with special care before confession. In current Catholic teaching, "Man has the right to act according to his conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions. He must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters".[20] This right of conscience does not, however, simply allow one to summarily disagree with a church teaching and claim that they are acting in accordance with conscience: "It can happen that moral conscience remains in ignorance and makes erroneous judgments about acts to be performed or already committed... This ignorance can often be imputed to personal responsibility... In such cases, the person is culpable for the evil he commits."[21] In certain situations involving individual personal decisions that are incompatible with church law, some pastors rely on the use of the internal forum solution. However, the Catholic Church has warned that "rejection of the Church's authority and her teaching...can be at the source of errors in judgment in moral conduct".[22][23]

The Religious Society of Friends or Quaker concept of inner light is associated with conscience. [24] Many prominent religious works about conscience also have a significant philosophical component: examples are the works of John Henry Newman, Al-Ghazali, Avicenna, Aquinas, Joseph Butler and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Secular views

Common secular or scientific views hold that the capacity for conscience is probably genetically determined, its subject matter is probably learned, or imprinted, like language, as part of a culture. The secular approach to conscience includes psychological, physiological, sociological, humanitarian and authoritarian views. A psychological definition of conscience is found in the writings of Martha Stout where she defined conscience as "an intervening sense of obligation based in our emotional attachments."[25]

The psychologist Sigmund Freud regarded conscience as originating in the superego, which takes its cue from one's parents during childhood. According to Freud, the consequence of not obeying our conscience is "guilt," which can be a factor in the development of neurosis: "[a]nother point of agreement between the cultural and individual super-ego is that the former, just like the latter, sets up strict ideal demands, disobedience to which is visited with 'fear of conscience'."[26]

Charles Darwin thought that any animal endowed with well-marked social instincts would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as its intellectual powers approximated man's.

In his book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins states that he agrees with Robert Hinde's Why Good is Good, Michael Shermer's The Science of Good and Evil, Robert Buckman's Can We Be Good Without God? and Marc Hauser's Moral Minds, that "our sense of right and wrong can be derived from our Darwinian past." [27]

Neuroscience and Artificial conscience

ASIMO robot-is an artificial conscience essential for artificial intelligence?

Numerous case studies of brain damage have shown that damage to specific areas of the brain (e.g. the anterior prefrontal cortex) results in the reduction or elimination of inhibitions, with a corresponding radical change in behaviour patterns. When the damage occurs to adults, they may still be able to perform moral reasoning; but when it occurs to children, they may never develop that ability.[28]

Modern day scientists in the fields of ethology, neuroscience and evolutionary psychology seek to explain conscience as a function of the brain that evolved to facilitate reciprocal altruism within societies.[29] Attempts have been made by neuroscientists to locate the free will necessary for the veto of conscience to operate, for example, in a measurable awareness of an intention to carry out an act that occurs about 350-400 microseconds after the electrical discharge known as the 'readiness potential.' [30][31] Jacques Pitrat claims that some kind of artificial conscience is beneficial in Artificial intelligence systems to improve their long-term performance and direct their introspective processing.[32]

Conscience as society-forming instincts

Those supporting this approach to conscience argue that people have a set of instincts and drives which enable them to form societies: groups of humans without these drives, or in whom they are insufficiently strong, cannot form cohesive societies and do not reproduce their kind as successfully as those that do. On such a view, behavior destructive to a person's society (either to its structures, or to the persons it comprises) is bad or "evil." Evil or wrong acts provoke either fear or disgust/contempt. Thus,conscience becomes those drives that prompt humans to avoid provoking fear or contempt in others and is experienced as guilt and shame in differing ways from society to society, and person to person. A requirement of conscience, under this appraoch, is the capacity to see ourselves from the point of view of another person. Persons unable to do this (psychopaths, sociopaths, narcissists) therefore often act in ways which are "evil." Friedrich Nietzsche for example stated that: "Communal solidarity is annihilated by the highest and strongest drives that, when they break out passionately, whip the individual far past the average low level of the 'herd-conscience.' [33]

Another requirement of this view of conscience is that humans consider some "other" as being in a social relationship.Thus, nationalism is invoked in conscience to quell tribal conflict, and the notion of a Brotherhood of Man is invoked to quell national conflicts.There are even appeals in this context to relationships between ourselves and the animals in society (pets, working animals, even animals grown for food), or between ourselves and nature as a whole. [34]The goal is that once people perceive a social relationship, their conscience will begin to operate with respect to that former "other", and they will change their actions. Conscience, then, and ideas of right and wrong, are a result of the kind of animals we are.[35][36].

Philosophical views

Conscience etymologically derives from the Latin conscientia meaning privity of knowledge, or with-knowledge (science means knowledge); but the English word implies a moral standard in the mind concerning the quality of one's motives, as well as a consciousness of our own actions. Thus, conscience properly considered philosophically is the reasoning employed about questions of right and wrong, accompanied with the sentiments of approbation and condemnation, as well as the resulting conviction of right or duty.

Medieval philosophical views

File:Persian Zakaria Razi.jpg
The medieval Islamic physician Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi taught of an interaction between conscience and physical health.

The medieval Islamic scholar and mystic Al-Ghazali divided the concept of Nafs (soul or self) into three categories based on the Qur’an: Nafs Ammarah (12:53) which "exhorts one to freely indulge in gratifying passions and instigates to do evil", Nafs Lawammah (75:2) which is "the conscience that directs man towards right or wrong", and Nafs Mutmainnah (89:27) which is "a self that reaches the ultimate peace."[37] The medieval Islamic philosopher and physician Muhammad ibn Zakariya al-Razi believed in a close relationship between conscience or spiritual integrity and physical health; thus, rather than being self-indulgent, man should pursue knowledge, utilise his intellect and apply justice in his life.[38] The medieval Islamic philosopher Avicenna, whilst imprisoned in the castle of Fardajan near Hamadhan, wrote his famous isolated-but-awake "Floating Man" sensory deprivation thought experiment to explore the ideas of human self-awareness and the substantiality of the soul; his hypothesis being that it is through intelligence, particularly the active intellect, that God communicates truth to the human mind or conscience. [39] According to the Islamic Sufis conscience allows Allah to guide people to the marifa, the peace or "light upon light" experienced where a Muslim's prayers lead to a melting away of the self in the inner knowledge of God; this being an important precursor of the eternal Paradise depicted in the Qur’ān.[40]

The Flemish mystic Jan van Ruysbroeck viewed a pure conscience as facilitating "an outflowing losing of oneself in the abyss of that eternal object which is the highest and chief blessedness."

Some medieval Christian scholastics made a distinction between conscience as a rational faculty of the mind and the concept of an emotive 'spark' to do good called synderesis; though the two terms may have originally meant the same thing.[41] Early modern theologians such as William Perkins and William Ames developed a syllogistic understanding of the conscience, where God's law made the first term, the act to be judged the second, and the action of the conscience (as a rational faculty) produced the judgement. This discursive conscience was trained using "cases" of conscience (ie. casuistry), where test cases were posed and solved by ministers.[42]

St. Thomas Aquinas claimed that conscience was "reason making right decisions" and that our God-given reason, by synderesis, has an innate awareness of good and evil which may be categorised as the five primary precepts proposed in his theory of Natural Law. Conscience, or conscientia, was the process of judgment which acts upon this innate synderesis: the "application of knowledge to activity"(Summa Theologiae, I-II, I).[43] Aquinas also discussed conscience in relation to the virtue of prudence to explain why some people appear to be less "morally enlightened" than others, their weak will being incapable of adequately balancing their own needs with those of others.[44]

Aquinas reasoned that acting contrary to conscience is an evil action, but an erring conscience is only truly blameworthy if it is the result of culpable or vincible ignorance of factors that it is one's duty to have knowledge about.[45] Aquinas also argued that conscience should be educated to act towards real goods (from God) which encouraged human flourishing, rather than the apparent goods of sensory pleasures.[43] In his Commentary on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics Aquinas claimed it was weak will that allowed a non-virtuous man to prioritise a principle allowing pleasure ahead of one requiring moral constraint.[46]

Thomas A Kempis in the medieval contemplative classic The Imitation of Christ stated that "The glory of a good man is the witness of a good conscience. Preserve a quiet conscience, and you will always have joy. A quiet conscience can endure much, and remains joyful in all trouble, but an evil conscience is always fearful and uneasy."[47]The anonymous medieval author of the Christian mystical work The Cloud of Unknowing similarly expressed the view that "In contemplation a soul dries up the root and ground of the sin that is always there, even after one's confession, and however busy one is in holy things. Therefore, whoever would work at becoming a contemplative must first clease his [or her] conscience."[48]

The medieval Flemish mystic John of Ruysbroeck held that four things are necessary to render a man just in the active and contemplative life: first, "a free spirit, attracting itself through love"; second, "an intellect enlightened by grace", third "a delight yielding propension or inclination" and fourth "an outflowing losing of oneself in the abyss of...that eternal object which is the highest and chief blessedness...those lofty amongst men, are absorbed in it, and immersed in a certain boundless thing."[49]

Modern philosophical ideas

Hegel's obscure and mystical Philosophy of Mind held that conscience facilitates human understanding of an all-embracing unity, an absolute which was rational, real and true.[50] A similar idealist notion was expressed in the writings of Joseph Butler who argued that conscience is God-given, should always be obeyed, is intuitive, and should be considered the "constitutional monarch" and the "universal moral faculty". Butler refers to the use of "self-love" and "benevolence" in conscience, which can be attributed to the Agape of Situational ethics.[51]

Schopenhauer considered that the good conscience we experience after an unselfish act verifies that our true self exists outside our physical person.

As the sacred texts of ancient Hindu and Buddhist philosophy became translated into German in the 18th and 19th centuries, they influenced philosophers such as Schopenhauer to hold that "In a healthy mind...only deeds oppress our conscience, not wishes and thoughts; for it is only our deeds that hold us up to the mirror of our will...the good conscience ...we experience after every disinterested deed. It arises from the fact that such a deed, as it proceeds from the direct recognition of our own inner being in the phenomenon of another, affords us also the verification of this knowledge, the knowledge that our true self exists not only in our own person, this particular manifestation, but in everything that lives. By this the heart feels itself enlarged, as by egotism it is contracted."[52] Immanuel Kant, part of the Age of Enlightenment, likewise claimed: "Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily they are reflected on: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me...the latter begins from my invisible self, my personality, and exhibits me in a world which has true infinity but which I recognise myself as existing in a universal and necessary (and not only, as in the first case, contingent) connection."[53] The 'universal connection' referred to here is Kant's categorical imperative: "act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."[54] John Locke in his Essays on the Law of Nature argued that the widespread fact of human conscience allowed a philosopher to infer the necessary existence of objective moral laws that occasionally might contradict those of the state.[55]

Rousseau expressed a similar view that conscience somehow connected man to a greater metaphysical unity. John Plamenatz in his critical examination of Rousseau stated: "Conscience, indestructible in us but easily defeated, is the feeling that urges us, in spite of contrary passions, towards the two harmonies: the one within our minds and between our passions, and the other within society and between its members...the weakest can appeal to it in the strongest, and the appeal, though often unsuccessful, is always disturbing. However corrupted by power or wealth we may be, either as possessors of them or as victims, there is something in us serving to remind us that this corruption is against nature."[56]

This type of transcendental view about conscience continued with Josiah Royce who pronounced that conscience was "simply that ideal of life which constitutes your moral personality...your plan of being yourself...common sense...views our moral decisions as due to our conscience, but our conscience as a mysterious higher or deeper self."[57]

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1932)

In the modern Christian tradition this approach achieved expression with Dietrich Bonhoeffer who stated during his imprisonment by the Nazis in WWII that "Conscience comes from a depth which lies beyond a man's own will and his own reason and it makes itself heard as the call of human existence to unity with itself. Conscience comes as an indictment of the loss of this unity and as a warning against the loss of one's self. Primarily it is directed not towards a particular kind of doing but towards a particular mode of being. It protests against a doing which imperils the unity of this being with itself...conscience does not, like shame, embrace the whole of life; it reacts only to certain definite actions...it recalls what is long past and represents this disunion as something which is already accomplished and irreparable...The man with a conscience fights a lonely battle against the overwhelming forces of inescapable situations which demand decisions."[58] Simon Soloveychik has similarly claimed that the truth distributed in the world, as the statement about human dignity, as the affirmation of the line between good and evil, lives in people as conscience. [59]

Albert Einstein associated conscience with suprapersonal thoughts, feelings and aspirations.

Albert Einstein, as a self-professed adherent of humanism and rationalism, likewise viewed an enlightened religious person as one "has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value." [60]

Opposing such metaphysical and idealist opinions about conscience were realist and materialist perspectives such as those of Charles Darwin. Darwin's view was that "any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or as nearly as well developed, as in man."[61] Emile Durkheim held that the soul and conscience were particular forms of an impersonal principle diffused in the relevant group and communicated by totemic ceremonies.[62] AJ Ayer was a more recent realist who held that the existence of conscience was an empirical question to be answered by sociological research: "All that one can legitimately enquire in this connection is, What are the moral habits of a given person or group of people, and what causes them to have precisely those habits and feelings? And this enquiry falls wholly within the scope of the existing social sciences."[63] George Edward Moore bridges the idealistic and sociological views of conscience in stating: "The idea of abstract 'rightness' and the various degrees of the specific emotion excited by it are what constitute the specifically 'moral sentiment' or 'conscience.' An action seems to be most properly termed 'internally right', solely in virtue of the fact that the agent has previously regarded it as right: the idea of 'rightness' must have been present to his [or her] mind, but need not necessarily have been among his motives."[64] Michael Walzer claimed that the growth of religious toleration in Western nations arose amongst other things, from the general recognition that private conscience signified some inner divine presence regardless of the religious faith professed and from "the general respectability, piety, self-limitation, and sectarian discipline which marked most of the men who claimed the rights of conscience."[65] Walzer also argued that attempts by courts to define conscience as "a merely personal moral code" or "sincere belief", risked encouraging an anarchy of moral egotisms, unless such a code and motive was necessarily tempered with shared moral knowledge: derived either from the connection of the individual to a universal spiritual order, or from the common principles and mutual engagements of unselfish people.[66] Ronald Dworkin maintains that constitutional protection of freedom of conscience is central to democracy but creates personal duties: "It matters as much that we live up to our freedom as that we have it. Freedom of conscience presupposes a personal responsibility of reflection, and it loses much of its meaning when that responsibility is ignored. A good life need not be an especially reflective one; most of the best lives are just lived rather than studied. But there are moments that cry out for self-assertion, when a passive bowing to fate or a mechanical decision out of deference or convenience is treachery, because it forfeits dignity for ease."[67] Edward Conze stated it is important for individual and collective moral growth that we recognise the illusion of our conscience being wholly located in our body; indeed both our conscience and wisdom expand when we act in an unselfish way and conversely "repressed compassion results in an unconscious sense of guilt."[68]

Moral anti-realists debate whether the moral facts necessary to activate conscience supervene on natural facts with a posteriori necessity; or arise a priori because moral facts have a primary intension and naturally identical worlds may be presumed morally identical.[69] It has also been argued that there is a measure of moral luck in how circumstances create the obstacles which conscience must overcome to apply principle: "with the benefit of property rights and the rule of law, alongside the absence of malaria, famine and high infant mortality, people in developed countries have been spared the requirement to steal loaves of bread, bribe tax inspectors and commit murder in guerrilla wars against government forces or rebel armies."[70] Scrutton has claimed that true understanding of conscience and morality has been hampered by an "impetuous belief that philosophical questions are solved through the analysis of language...in an area where clarity threatens vested interests."[71]

Conscientious acts and the law

A conscience vote in a parliament allows legislators to vote without restrictions from their political party. In his post-war trial Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann was widely perceived as denying his conscience in claiming he was simply "doing his job" (or 'following legal orders').[72]

A conscientious objector is an individual prepared to undertake, in public, an action of disobedience to a legal rule justifying it (also in public) by reference to contrary considerations of personal moral, professional ethical or international human rights principle.[73] Conscientious objection (also called conscientious refusal or evasion) often arises for those whose seriously thought out personal moral or religious beliefs are fundamentally incompatible (that is, not merely inconsistent on the basis of selfish desires, whim or impulse) with conscription for military service, or sometimes with any role in the armed forces. [74]

Amnesty International protects prisoners of conscience. Stamp from Faroe Islands 1986.

Amnesty International has created the term prisoner of conscience to mean a person imprisoned for their conscientious beliefs. In legislation, a conscience clause is a clause in a law that relieves an individual from complying with the law if it is incompatible with religious or conscientious beliefs. Reasons for refusing to obey laws because of conscience are varied. Many conscientious objectors are so for religious reasons—notably, members of the historic peace churches are pacifist by doctrine. Other objections can stem from a deep sense of responsibility toward humanity as a whole, or from simple denial that any government should have that kind of moral authority. A conscientious objector, however, does not have a primary aim of changing the law.[73] John Dewey considered that conscientious objectors were often the victims of "moral innocency" and inexpertness in moral training. "The moving force of events is always too much for conscience", he wrote.[75] The remedy was not to deplore the wickedness of those who manipulate world power, but to connect conscience with forces moving in another direction- to build institutions and social environments predicated on the rule of law, for example, "then will conscience itself have compulsive power instead of being forever the martyred and the coerced." [75]

Samuel Johnson (1775) stated that "No man's conscience can tell him the right of another man."

Samuel Johnson was careful to point out that an appeal to conscience should not allow the law to bring unjust suffering upon another: "Conscience is nothing more than a conviction felt by ourselves of something to be done or something to be avoided; and in questions of simple unperplexed morality, conscience is very often a guide that may be trusted. But before conscience can determine, the state of the question is supposed to be completely known...No man's conscience can tell him the right of another man...it is a conscience very ill informed that violates the rights of one man, for the convenience of another."[76] Civil disobedience or non-violent protest are also acts of conscience, but are designed to change the law or government policies (that are perceived to be incoherent with fundamental moral, ethical or international human rights principles such as justice, equality or respect for intrinsic human dignity) by appealing to the majority and democratic processes.[77] A famous example was when Henry David Thoreau the author of Walden was willingly jailed for refusing to pay a tax.[78]

Gandhi in Noakhali, 1946.

Another notable example involved Mahatma Ghandi making salt in India when that act was prohibited by British law.[79] Rosa Parks similarly acted on conscience in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama refusing a legal order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger; her action (and the similar earlier act of 15-year-old Claudette Colvin) leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.[80]

Conscientious non-compliance is a private (non-public) refusal (for example by a medical professional who adheres strongly to the principles of the Hippocratic Oath concerning egalitarian treatment) to obey a law that is perceived to be incoherent with those foundational professional ethics, [or possibly moral, religious or international human rights] principles; it must be altruistically motivated and the person performing it must be willing to ultimately accept responsibility and if necessary offer a public justification of his or her actions according to those foundational principles.[81] In privatised healthcare systems it may become an important means of affirming central values of medical professionalism when employment contracts, and the repeal or amendment of public interest disclosure legislation [protecting whistleblowers] limit the general release of information that is relevant to public safety but contrary to corporate interests.[82] Conscientious noncompliance may be a practical act affirming the existence of an international moral order or 'core' historical rights (such as the right to life, right to a fair trial and freedom of opinion) for citizens in states where non-violent protest or civil disobedience are met with prolonged arbitrary detention, torture, forced disappearance, murder or persecution.[83] The controversial Milgram experiment into obedience by Stanley Milgram showed that many people lack the psychological resources to openly resist authority, even when they are directed to act callously and inhumanely against an innocent victim.[84]

World conscience

File:L homme de la conscience.JPG
L'homme de la conscience.Marie-Rose Atchama,2009.

World conscience is the universalism idea that with ready global communication, all people on earth will no longer be morally estranged from one another, whether it be culturally, ethnically, or geographically; instead they will validate the idea that all should conceive ethics from the point of view of the universe rather than have their duties and obligations defined by forces arising solely within the restrictive boundaries of 'blood and territory.'[85] Often this derives from a spiritual or natural law perspective, that for world peace to be achieved, conscience, properly understood, should be generally considered as not necessarily linked (often destructively) to fundamentalist religious ideologies, but as having a necessary connection to (or being an aspect of) universal consciousness, access to which is the common heritage of humanity.[86] Thinking predicated on the development of world conscience is common to members of the Global Ecovillage Network such as the Findhorn Foundation as well as performers of world music such as Alan Stivell.[87] The philosopher Peter Singer has argued that the United Nations Millennium Development Goals represent the emergence of an ethics based not on national boundaries but on the idea of one world.[88]Noam Chomsky has argued that forces opposing the development of such a world conscience include free market ideologies that valorise corporate greed in nominal electoral democracies where advertising, shopping malls and indebtedness, shape citizens into apathetic consumers in relation to information and access necessary for democratic participation.[89] John Passmore has argued that mystical considerations about the global expansion of all human consciousness, should take into account that if as a species we do become something much superior to what we are now, it will be as a consequence of conscience not only implanting a goal of moral perfectability, but assisting us to remain periodically anxious, passionate and discontented, for these are necessary components of care and compassion.[90]

Notable examples of modern acts based on conscience

One notable contemporary act of conscience was the protest by Christian bushwalker Brenda Hean against the flooding of Lake Pedder despite threats and that ultimately lead to her death.[91] Another was the campaign by Ken Saro-Wiwa against oil extraction by multinational corporations in Nigeria that led to his execution.[92]

"Tank Man" stops the advance of a column of tanks on June 5, 1989 in Beijing. This photo became one of the most powerful contemporary symbolic expressions of conscience standing up to power. Photo by Jeff Widener (Associated Press).

So too was the act by the Tank Man, or the Unknown Rebel photographed holding his shopping bag in the path of tanks during the protests at Beijing's Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989. The actions of United Nations Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold to try and achieve peace in the Congo despite the (eventuating) threat to his life, were strongly motivated by conscience as is reflected in his diary, Vägmärken (Markings).[93] Another example involved the actions of Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, Jr to try and prevent the My Lai Massacre in the Vietnam War.[94] Conscience played a major role in the actions by anaesthetist Stephen Bolsin to whistleblow on incompetent paediatric cardiac surgeons at the Bristol Royal Infirmary.[95]

File:Bolsbrist.jpg
Stephen Bolsin who exposed the Bristol paediatric cardiac surgery scandal

Jeffrey Wigand was motivated by conscience to expose the Big Tobacco scandal, revealing that executives of the companies knew that cigarettes were addictive and approved the addition of carcinogenic ingredients to the cigarettes. David Graham (epidemiologist), a Food and Drug Administration employee, was motivated by conscience to whistleblow that the arthritis pain-reliever Vioxx increased the risk of cardiovascular deaths although the manufacturer suppressed this information.[96] Rick Piltz from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, blew the whistle on a White House official who ignored scientific opinion to edit a climate change report to reflect the Bush administration's view that the problem was unlikely to exist.[97] Muntadhar al-Zaidi, an Iraqi journalist, was imprisoned and allegedly tortured for his act of conscience in throwing his shoes at George W. Bush.[98] Mordechai Vanunu an Israeli former nuclear technician, acted on conscience to reveal details of Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986; was kidnapped by Israeli agents, transported to Israel, convicted of treason and spent 18 years in prison, including more than 11 years in solitary confinement.[99] W. Mark Felt an agent of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation who retired in 1973 as the Bureau's Associate Director, acted on conscience to provide reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein with information that resulted in the Watergate scandal.[100] Conscience was a major factor in US Public Health Service officer Peter Buxtun revealing the Tuskegee syphilis experiment to the public. [101]

Peter Buxtun who campaigned in the 1960's to expose the moral disaster of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.

Conscience is a major factor in the refusal of Aung San Suu Kyi to leave Burma despite house arrest and persecution by the military dictatorship in that country.[102] Conscience motivated Bunnatine Greenhouse to expose irregularities in the contracting of the Halliburton company for work in Iraq.[103] The journalist Anna Politkovskaya provided (prior to her murder) an example of conscience in her opposition to the Chechen war and then-Russian President Vladimir Putin.[104] Conscience motivated the Russian human rights activist Natalia Estemirova who was abducted and murdered in Grozny, Chechnya in 2009.[105] The Death of Neda Agha-Soltan arose from conscience-driven protests against the 2009 Iranian presidential election.

Conscience in literature, art, film and music

Eugène Delacroix, Hamlet and Horatio in the Graveyard (1839, Oil on canvas).

The critic A. C. Bradley discusses the central problem of Shakespeare's tragic character Hamlet as one where conscience in the form of moral scruples deters the young Prince with his "great anxiety to do right" from obeying his father's hell-bound ghost and murdering the usurping King ("is't not perfect conscience to quit him with this arm?" (v.ii.67)). [106]Anton Chekhov in his plays The Seagull, Uncle Vanya and The Three Sisters describes the tortured emotional states of doctors who at some point in their careers have turned their back on conscience.[107]E. H. Carr writes of Dostoevsky's character the young student Raskolnikov in the novel Crime and Punishment who decides to murder a 'vile and loathsome' old woman money lender on the principle of transcending conventional morals: "the sequel reveals to us not the pangs of a stricken conscience (which a less subtle writer would have given us) but the tragic and fruitless struggle of a powerful intellect to maintain a conviction which is incompatible with the essential nature of man."[108] The Robert Bolt play A Man For All Seasons focuses on the conscience of lawyer Thomas More in his struggle with King Henry VIII ("the loyal subject is more bounden to be loyal to his conscience than to any other thing").[109] A tapestry copy of Picasso's Guernica (painting) depicting a massacre of innocent women and children in the Spanish civil war is displayed on the wall of the United Nations building in New York City, at the entrance to the Security Council room, demonstrably as a spur to the conscience of representatives from the nation states. Albert Tucker (artist) painted Man's Head to capture the moral disintegration, and lack of conscience, of a man convicted of kicking a dog to death.[110]

The iconic scene of Death allowing the knight Antonius Block to play chess until he can perform one meaningful act of conscience.

The 1957 Ingmar Bergman film Seventh Seal portrays the journey of a medieval knight (Max von Sydow) returning disillusioned from the crusades ("what is going to happen to those of us who want to believe, but aren't able to?") across a plague-ridden landscape, undertaking a game of chess with the personification of Death until he can perform one meaningful altruistic act of conscience (overturning the chess board to distract Death long enough for a family of jugglers to escape in their wagon). [111] The 1942 Casablanca (film) centers on the development of conscience in the cynical American Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart) in the face of oppression by the Nazis and the example of the resistance leader Victor Laszlo.[112] The David Lean and Robert Bolt screenplay for Doctor Zhivago (film) (an adaptation of Boris Pasternak's novel) focuses strongly on the conscience of a doctor-poet in the midst of the Russian Revolution (in the end "the walls of his heart were like paper").[113] The 1982 Ridley Scott film Blade Runner focuses on the struggles of conscience between and within a bounty hunter (Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford)) and a renegade replicant android (Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer)) in a future society which refuses to accept that forms of artificial intelligence can have aspects of being such as conscience.[114] The John Lennon work Imagine owes much of its popular appeal to its evocation of conscience against the atrocities created by war, religious fundamentalism and politics.[115] The Conscience-in-Media Award is presented by the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) to journalists that the society deems worthy of recognition.

See also

References

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