The Significance and Complexity of Conscience
Journal article
Coady, Tony. (2023). The Significance and Complexity of Conscience. Philosophia. 51, pp. 2497-2516. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-023-00692-3
Authors | Coady, Tony |
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Abstract | The concept of conscience continues to play a central role in our ethical reasoning as well as in public and philosophical debate over medical ethics, religious freedom, and conscientious objection in many fields, including war. Despite this continued relevance the nature of conscience itself has remained a relatively neglected topic in recent philosophical literature. In this paper I discuss some historical background to the concept and outline the essential features required for any satisfactory account of conscience and its significance for a coherent moral psychology. It will become clear that conscience is a complex concept resisting reduction to any one of its component features. In doing so I critique recent accounts of conscience which have been insufficiently attentive to these complexities and as a consequence have drawn mistaken conclusions about the legitimate role of conscience in moral reasoning. I also discuss the significance of various distortions of conscience such what I call “the fanaticised conscience”. Clarifying our concept of conscience helps us avoid both conceptual confusion in moral psychology and misapplications of the concept in our understanding of conscientious objection both theoretically and in practice. |
Keywords | Conscience; Its conceptual history; Religion; Emotion; Reason; Judgement; Immature conscience; Fanaticised conscience; Conscientious objection |
Year | 01 Jan 2023 |
Journal | Philosophia |
Journal citation | 51, pp. 2497-2516 |
Publisher | Springer-Verlag Dordrecht |
ISSN | 0048-3893 |
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-023-00692-3 |
Web address (URL) | https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11406-023-00692-3 |
Open access | Published as ‘gold’ (paid) open access |
Research or scholarly | Research |
Page range | 2497-2516 |
Publisher's version | License File Access Level Open |
Output status | Published |
Publication dates | |
Online | 11 Oct 2023 |
Publication process dates | |
Accepted | 26 Sep 2023 |
Deposited | 21 Jun 2024 |
Additional information | © Crown 2023 |
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/ | |
Open Access funding enabled and organized by CAUL and its Member Institutions. | |
Place of publication | Netherlands |
https://acuresearchbank.acu.edu.au/item/90992/the-significance-and-complexity-of-conscience
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OA_Coady_2023_The_Significance_and_Complexity_of_Conscience.pdf | |
License: CC BY 4.0 | |
File access level: Open |
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