ARTICLE
Conscience-based Ethics
Dr Paul Strube | BSc . Med . PhD Academic Supervisor in Social Sciences , Endeavour College of Natural Health
“ Let your conscience be your guide ”: attributed to both Jiminy Cricket in Disney ’ s version of Pinocchio , and to Marvin Gaye , the title of his debut single in 1961 .
Abstract This more informal paper , asking more questions than it tries to answer , is concerned with the place of the concept of the conscience in ethical decision-making . It addresses the question of whether or not it might be legitimate to use one ’ s conscience as a justification for actions that may be deemed unethical by a Code of Ethics in any given complementary medicine profession . It first looks at what a conscience might be taken to be , and where it comes from , and then moves to examine it as a possible ethical factor in decision making .
The initial difficulty : questions of conscience
I would like to invite the reader to take a few moments to consider the following series of questions , and try and answer them first of all from a personal perspective .
1 . What do you understand by the word conscience ? 2 . Do you think you have one ? 3 . If you do , where did it come from ? 4 . Does it change / mature as you do ? 5 . Do you rely on it for making ethical / moral decisions ?
6 . Do you think it could be used appropriately in defending a decision you made that might be in opposition to a code of ethics ?
I believe these questions are relevant in an academic paper such as this because there are no agreed upon understandings by philosophers and theologians about any of them . On the other hand , in conversations with others , it does appear as if there is an intuitive set of ideas about what the answers would be , often without conscious reflection .
A few things that we do seem to have come to agree upon over time can be isolated , however . Let ’ s start with trying to determine what they are .
The term conscience translates the Latin conscientia , which refers to sharing knowledge ( scientia ), and which in turns translates the equivalent Greek term suneidenai . The literal meaning of the term does not specify the type of knowledge involved and whom that knowledge is shared with . However , the concept has traditionally been used to refer to moral knowledge that is shared with oneself . This reference to the self does not rule out the possibility that the source of the morality in question is external to the self . For example , it might be God , as in the Christian tradition , or the influence of one ’ s culture or of one ’ s upbringing , as in the Freudian theory of the Super-Ego . Reference to the self indicates however that , from a psychological point of view , conscience involves introspection , awareness of one ’ s behaviour , and self-assessment .
92 | vol27 | no2 | JATMS