Question

How do you now define ‘conscience’? How do you understand conscience to play out for you in making a moral decision? Also, most students indicate to me that they were never taught how to evaluate moral decisions, whether in the past or in the future. Given that, how does the schema of intention/means/circumstances help you in evaluating or coming to a moral decision?

Answer 1

conscience is an judgement which helps us decide whats right or wrong. these are generally based on the societal norms. when one goes against the morality it makes him feel sad and guilty and when one comforms to his morality then it makes them feel happy and proud. whenever I need to make a decision and I go by the trial and error method for it that means that I think of many possible decisions in my brain, an internal process which helps me judge the decision as morally correct or not by good thoughts and feelings associated with right decision and bad thoughts and feelings associated with wrong decision helps me make it with proper judgement. to exeplify this, I can state that if I take a long leave from the office/ school for a trip and decide upon the reason to be told behind it then there can be two kinds of decisions. first, I might decide to tell the actual reason that i need to go out on a long trip to my superiors which lessens the chances of it getting approved but seems morally correct and generates good feelings. second, i might decide to lie about it and say due to some mis happening I wont be ble to come to work or school for some days and extend it by making more and more excuses. this seems morally incorrect and generates feelings of being guilty in future also. this is how conscience works by linking right and wrong to certain feelings.

although people are never thought to evaluate or make moral decisions still they do so. schemas attached to our attention as well as our circumstances help us make moral decisions. schemas develop from various norms and our norms make us evaluate what is right or wrong. different cultures set various conventions for people belonging to them and everyone is expected to conform to such norms. although the norms of other cultures are accepted as their preference but morality is strict and people are intolerant about morally deviant behavior irrespective of the other persons preference. moral motivation originates from our internal beliefs irrespective of what the society and authorities make mandatory about it despite of the fact that norms also influence our beliefs. an example to this is that children think obedience is linked to respect and even if their teachers or parents ask them its ok if they don't want to obey a particular thing still they do not because of hierarchy but because of the morality which says respecting people is right.