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Module 7: Conscience

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this module, the students should be able to:

1. Define the importance of Morality and Conscience ;

2. Determine the right way to use conscience
3. Apply conscience in ethical dilemma

This module discusses the morality that refers to be rightness or wrongness of human
acts. We speak of objective or subjective morality accordingly as it overlooks the
particular characteristics of the doer of the act and his or her circumstances or else take
them into consideration. The norm of subjective morality is the evaluative judgement of
PROBLEM conscience.
We make two kinds of judgements about ourselves and our actions: (1) judge whether and
how far I am responsible and so for my every self and (2) I also judge whether these acts
are good or bad and whether I as a person deserve praise or blame as a result of doing
these actions.
As we said earlier, ethics takes as its starting point a fact of human experience: the
conviction that some acts are right and ought to be than, that others are wrong and ought
not to be done and still others are indifferent and may either be done or not. Whether such
evaluative judgements are correct or not is another matter, but the fact we are interested
in is that people do make them.

They also judge themselves and one another as persons. The power to do this kind of
evaluative judging is called conscience, the conscious self-attuned to moral values and
disvalues (right and wrong, good and evil) in the concrete and judging the self and its
personal actions in terms of those values and disvalues.
How far we as individuals are responsible for our acts only the individual person can
know. The act I do has its source in me; it is my act. Because this is so the quality of my act
reveals the quality of my own personhood. I am the kind of person who does this kind of
act, and so to the degree that I am responsible for the quality of my acts I am also
responsible for the kind of person I am. Other may judge me, but without my help they can
see only the externals. I usually know when I have been misjudged by others, and I can
know this only by comparing their judgement with my own and passing a further
judgement on both these judgements. Reflecting on my act in this way, I can usually find
the degree of my own responsibility for the act I have done and for the further
determination I have given my own personal character by doing that act. The judgement of
responsibility as such is different from the judgement of conscience. The two are certainly
connected with one another, because we normally judge the goodness or badness,
rightness or wrongness, of only the acts we are responsible for. The judgement about
responsibility is a factual judgement about the degree of voluntariness; the judgement of
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conscience is an evaluative judgement about the moral value or disvalue of my act and so
of myself as a person.
Since we have been dealing up to this point with the subjective aspects of the
human act such as voluntariness and responsibility and since morality first presents itself
to our experience as a personal reflective judgement on our acts and ourselves as being
good or bad, right or wrong, moral or immoral long before we have begun to articulate the
principles on which such judgements rest or should rest, it will be convenient to continue
with the subjective aspects of morality. All people, no matter what their system of morals
might be, make the kind of evaluative judgements associated with conscience and admit
that they make them. It is when we try to find an objective basis for the judgements of
conscience that ideas about values, about what is good or bad, right or wrong, moral or
immoral begin to diverge.

The differences of approach that people take in these matters cannot be

understood, compared, and examined until we make the effort to justify our own personal
judgements of conscience. Embedded in all the differences is something common to the all
all—the need to be true to oneself as a person. Apart from what others may think and do, I
must in the last analysis make my own informed judgements, so I am ultimately dependent
on my own judgements of good and bad, right and wrong, moral and immoral. This
personal judgement in these terms about my own actions and about myself as a person is
what we mean in this chapter by the judgement of conscience.

We shall use the following points to guide us in our discussion:

1. What do we mean by morality?
2. What is conscience?
3. How is the judgement of conscience formed?
4. What part do our emotions play in forming the judgement of conscience?
5. Must we always follow the judgement of conscience?
6. May we act with a doubtful conscience?
7. How can doubts of conscience be solved?

MEANING OF MORALITY

Morality is the quality or value human acts have by which we call them right or wrong,
good or evil. It is a general term covering the goodness or badness of a human act without
specifying which of the two moral values is meant. The term moral is also used at times as
a general term covering both good and bad qualities or values in the same way that
morality is used, that is, without specifying whether good or bad or both good and bad are
meant. We speak of the moral character of a person’s acts or personality and say, for
instance, “Harry is a mature adult capable of moral discrimination,” meaning that Harry
can differentiate between good and bad; “Jane’s moral character is an unknown quantity to
me,” meaning that Jane may be good or bad; “George’s motivation in helping the poor
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seems morally ambiguous,” meaning that George seems to have a mixture of good and bad
motives.
The terms moral and immoral mark the extremes of good and bad within morality,
in the field of morals when moral is used as the opposite of immoral. The term moral
means “morally good” only when it is clearly opposed to immoral, which means “morally
bad.” When moral and immoral are used in opposition to one another to describe human
acts, each indicates that the act has a definite moral quality or value. An act is moral when
it has the quality or value of being good; an act is immoral when it has the quality or value
of being good: an act is immoral when it has the quality or value of being bad. For instance,
“John’s decision not to have the operation was moral or “Jane did the moral thing in telling
Harry how she feels about George.” Usually the context will make the meaning of moral
clear. The word amoral is sometimes used in the sense of “nonmoral.” But more often it is
applied to persons deficient in moral concern or responsibility.
Moral beyond being used to designate the good or bad quality of human acts, is also
used to designate the quality of a person as good or evil, as upright or despicable. The field
of morals, that is morality, is possible because of the kind of beings are namely, beings who
have the power to do both good and evil. Such are our possibilities. We can do good but we
can also not do it. That “not” points to the limitedness or finiteness that is integral to our
being as persons and affects our relations with the rest of the world. Because there is this
negativity or limitedness about our being, we as personal beings can fail to live always in
accord with our potentialities and our vision of the good. To some extent we are all closed
and indifferent to others. We cannot love enough to be completely open to all others and
concerned with their lives and what happens to them; we are imperfect and weak at times
even when we would like to be more perfect and strong. Because of our limitedness as
persons, we have the possibility of doing evil rather than good.
In judging the morality of a human act, we take into consideration the subjective
peculiarities of the agent (the doer of the act) and look at the act as conditioned by the
agent’s knowledge and consent, background, training, prejudices, emotional maturity and
stability, value orientation, and other personal traits. We ask whether this individual
person did right or wrong in this particular situation, whether this particular act was good
or bad for him or her to do in particular circumstances. Considered in this way, morality is
subjective, the goodness or badness being determined by whether the act agrees or
disagrees with the agent’s own judgement of conscience.
We may also abstract from such subjective conditions which, though always present
in any individual act, can be known directly only by the simply look at the kind of act
performed and at the outward circumstances apparent to any observer. Then we ask not
whether this individual is excused from responsibility for the act because of strong
emotion, ignorance, or any other modifier of responsibility, but whether, if any normal
person with full command of his or her own powers deliberately willed that kind of act, the
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result would be a morally good act. We would be judging the objective nature of the act
done, not the subjective state of the doer. Morality considered in this way is objective
morality.
If we ask, “is murder wrong?” “Is truthfulness right?” we are asking about objective
morality. If we ask “did this man fully realize what he was doing when he killed that child?”
“Did this woman intend to tell the truth when she blurted out that remark?” we are asking
about subjective morality.
Morality in its completeness includes both its subjective and its objective aspects.
Neither aspect is more important than the other. Unless acts have a rightness or
wrongness of their own with which a person’s judgement of conscience can and should be
in agreement, anybody’s judgement is as good as anybody else’s and ethics becomes a
mere listing of personal opinions. The study of ethics generally stresses objective morality.
But each person has a life to live, must personally account for his or her deeds as he or she
saw them, and will be judged morally good or bad in terms of the sincerity in following his
or her conscience even if his or her moral judgements turn out to have been objectively
incorrect.
In this sense, subjective morality is paramount for each person; but at the same
time, each of us tries to conform his or her judgement of conscience to what is objective
morality is paramount.

MEANING OF CONSCIENCE

In the popular mind, conscience is often thought of as an “inner voice,” sometimes as the
“voice of God,” telling us what to do or avoid, but this is metaphor. If conscience speaks
with a voice, it is our own. Doubtless, most people do experience a kind of subconscious
reaction based on their childhood environment training, a tendency to approve or
disapprove of things for which approval or disapproval was shown in childhood. Such a
tendency will often give correct moral estimates or evaluations if one has been brought up
well. As a result of such early childhood experiences I may have a vague, unidentifiable
feeling, a sense of unease and even of “guilt” in departing from the established pattern,
even when I recognize the feeling as unreasonable. This is not what is meant by conscience
in the traditional sense, nor is it to be identified with Freud’s “super-ego” though they are
somewhat related.
In the traditional sense, conscience is not a special power distinct from our intellect.
Otherwise our judgements about the rightness or wrongness of our individual acts would
be non-intellectual, nonrational, the product of something other than our own
consciousness. Conscience is only the intellect itself exercising a special function, the
function of judging the rightness or wrongness, the moral value, of our own individual acts
according to the set of moral values and principles the person holds with conviction.
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Conscience is a function of intellect concerned with actions that can be good or bad. It does
not deal with theoretical questions of right and wrong in general, such as “Why is lying
wrong?” “Why must justice be done?” but with the practical question: “What ought I do to
do here and now in this concrete situation?” “If I do this act I am thinking of, will I be lying,
will I be unjust?” Conscience is the same practical intelligence I use to judge what to do or
avoid in other affairs of life: how shall I run my business, invest my money, protect my
health, design my house, plant my farm, raise my family? Like other human judgements,
conscience can go wrong, can make mistaken moral judgements. As a person can make
mistakes about what is the right thing to do here and now. In making any such practical
judgement, however, a person has no guide other than his or her intelligence desiring to do
what is right and good and what that intelligence reveals about what it is right and good to
do in the situation here and now.
Conscience, in this traditional sense, can then be defined as the intellect’s practical
judgement about an individual act as good and to be done, or as evil and to be avoided. The
term conscience can actually be applied to any of the three distinct aspects of this
judgement process:
1. The intellect as a person’s ability, under the influence of a desire to do the right and
the good, to form judgements about the right and wrong of individual acts
2. The process of reasoning that we go through, under the influence of that desire, to
reach such a judgement
3. The conclusion of this reasoning process, which is called the evaluative judgement
of conscience
The reasoning process we go through in arriving at a judgement of conscience is the same
as in any logical deductive argument, even though we rarely spell out the steps for
ourselves. Usually we draw the conclusions so quickly that, we are not aware that we have
been engaging in a process of deductive reasoning. We arrive at the judgement of
conscience by a kind of “shortcut” that seems to conceal the deductive process. For
example:
1. “Should I say this? No, that would be a lie.”
2. “Must I correct this mistake? Yes, it may hurt someone.”
3. “May I keep this? Of course, no one else owns it.”
These are all examples of a shortened form of deductive reasoning used to form a
judgement of conscience. If we were to formulate explicitly each of the deductions in these
examples, this is what we would have:
1. Lies are immoral. This explanation of my conduct is a lie. This explanation of my
conduct is immoral.
2. Mistakes that may endanger someone must be corrected. The mistake I just made
may endanger someone. I must correct the mistake I just made.
3. What belongs to no one may be kept. This object I just picked up belongs to no one.
I may keep this object I just picked up.
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Deductive reasoning supposes a major premise or general principle, a minor premise or

application of the principle to a particular case, and a conclusion necessarily following
from the two premises. The major premise employed in forming the judgement of
conscience is a moral value or a general moral principle known by means of our rational
predisposition to appreciate moral values and formulate such principles so as to have
them in my mind ready for use as the basis of our conduct. The major premise may be
either a principle I have directly formulated as a result of this preposition such as “do good
and avoid evil,” “Respect the rights of others,” and “Do to others as you would have them
do to you” or a conclusion derived from such a principle and held as a general rule of
conduct for myself. The minor premise brings the particular act here and now to be done
under the scope of the general principle stated in the major premise. The conclusion that
logically follows is the judgement of conscience itself.

EMOTION AND CONSCIENCE

The judgment of conscience is an evaluative judgement made in terms of the goodness and
badness of the act I did or am thinking of doing. Say, for example, my “conscience bothers
me” because I feel guilt or remorse for speaking harshly to one of my closest friends when
he criticized me for the way I voted in the last election. I am reflecting on a past act,
speaking harshly to my friend, an act done in a situation that obviously involved a great
deal more than intellectual activity. I was in conversation with whom I love, and it was in
that context that he criticized me for voting as I did. I had voted the way I judged that
ought, given my own moral and political convictions. I was trying to be true to myself in
voting as I did. My friend could not allow the incident to pass without criticizing my view
because he loves me and cared enough to try to help me see something I did not see before.
I became angry with him because of his criticism of my views and expressed that anger in
harsh words. Now I am experiencing guilt or remorse for having responded to his love and
care in that way. Why? Because I find on reflection, that anger and harsh words were an
inappropriate response on my part. My anger at the moment blocked out the fact of our
mutual love and my response was one of taking offense where none was meant.
Note the interplay of emotion evaluative on both sides in this situation. If emotion was not
at all involved, there would be no judgement of conscience in the first place, because I
would have been aware of no values either to form my convictions about how to vote or to
respond to my friend’s love and care. My moral awareness in terms of forming personal
convictions about how to vote have been there. The evaluational elements that I use in
living my life have their beginnings in my emotions, the affective side of my being.
Conscience is not so much a part of ethics as it is the morally evaluating self that ethics as
study seeks to serve. This morally evaluating self that my conscience is grows out of
appreciation of myself and of other persons as valuable, intrinsically worthwhile, and
important just because we are all persons. My moral awareness, my conscience, has its
roots in this appreciation of self and grows and develops in the process of experiencing
myself and others in our interrelatedness. Just as no two persons are ever absolutely
identical, so no two consciences will ever be identical.
My conscience bears the unique markings of my moral journey through life. It is
conditioned by my personal history and is develop as my history develops. What my
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conscience has in common with other consciences is it rootedness in that moral experience
of self and other as interrelated and valuable. My conscience is like a housing that myself
build and carry around with me through life. I look out the world and other persons
through the windows in this housing. Another way of speaking of his housing is to call it
my personal value orientation, my set of moral values and principles that I hold with
conviction, the values and principles I have found for myself and tested out with my own
emotions and then integrated into my own moral approach to life.
Conscience is not developed by critical thought alone. Emotion also enters into its
development along with imagination, for conscience is not merely our power to judge the
past in moral terms but also our ability to see alternatives in moral situations that have
implications for the future. All moral knowledge has an emotional dimension, and our
emotions draw the values we experience into the interior of our personality. These values
enter into our intellectual framework for use in making our evaluative judgements of
conscience. The values and principles we accept and hold with conviction become so much
a part of the moral self that we use them in making our judgements of conscience without a
judgements of conscience without reformulating them as we go along. We use the rules of
grammar when we speak, but we do not reformulate those rules explicitly as we speak. So
too, in working out a judgement of conscience, we use the values and principles we have
found for ourselves and integrated into our moral stance toward others and to our life
itself without explicitly reformulating those moral values and principles when we act. They
are enfleshed in us and at our service even if we do not think of them explicitly.
The person who is morally good is one who loves the good and is sensitive to its presence.
Love enables us to discover the value of other by guiding us to those values and revealing
them for our understanding and appreciation. A love-informed conscience has a special
keenness for discerning the good that exists and a creative impulse to bring about an
increase of good in our lives and the lives of others.
Another way we can see how much emotion is involved in conscience is to realize
that our most profound interpersonal relationships are precisely relationships in which
one moral consciousness meets another at the level and in the intimacy of conscience. To
love another person is to give one’s deepest self to that other to cherish and, in turn, to
accept and cherish that other’s deepest self. This is the same as moral conscience meeting
and cherishing another moral conscience. The encounter of self with another self is total.
Certainly it is not a mere meeting of intellects; it is a meeting of persons with all that this
means in terms of emotion, intellect, will, imagination, and inclination. Since conscience is
the total moral personality, conscience is also more than intellect and includes emotion,
willing, imagination, and natural inclination as well.
In the opening chapter of this book we spoke of the difference between customary
morality and reflective morality. Customary morality enters into the formation of the
conscious moral self each of us is by teaching us the moral tradition of our society and
civilization. We also learn about moral values and principles from our parents and other
persons of authority. Our awareness of moral values and truths has a social dimension, for
we depend on one another in knowing ourselves and our world. Conscience just because it
is personal and unique, need not be closed-minded but can be realistically, need not be
closed-minded but can be realistically to embrace the truth wherever it is discovered.
What we must not do is allow ourselves to be engulfed and dominated by others. A good
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conscience is both individual and social at the same time. We, as a person, are not atomistic
centers of moral judgements; we live our lives in dialogue with others, and so the moral
self that I am mirrors my social nature. Conscience is not a matter of me against them; it is
an affair of me distinct from them but together with them. If I am to follow my own
conscience; then I must also question my own conscience and test it. I can do this only with
the help of others, being emotionally sincere and intellectually honest with them. From
those around us we need love and respect as persons, conscious moral selves, and then we
can explore the depth and dynamics of our moral awareness but only if we respond to that
love and respect in a creative way.

KINDS OF CONSCIENCE

Conscience may be a guide to future actions, prompting us to do them or avoid

them, or a judge of our past actions, the source of our self-approval or remorse. For the
purpose of ethics, conscience as a guide to future actions is more important. Its acts are
chiefly four: commanding or forbidding, when the act must either be done or avoided;
persuading or permitting, when there is a question of the better or worse course of actions
without a strict obligation.
Since the judgement of conscience is an intellectual judgement and the intellect can
err, either by adopting false premises or by drawing an illogical conclusion, conscience can
be either correct or erroneous. A correct conscience judges as good what is really good,
and as evil what is really evil. In this case, subjective and objective morality correspond. An
erroneous conscience judges as good what is really evil, or as evil what is really good. All
error involves ignorance, because a person cannot make a false judgement unless he or she
lacks knowledge of the truth. The ignorance involved in error is either vincible, if the error
can be overcome and the judgement corrected, or invincible, if the error cannot be
overcome and the judgement cannot be corrected, at least by means any normally prudent
person would be expected to use.

A person’s judgement of conscience may also be certain or doubtful. We are certain

when we judge without fear that the opposite may be true in fact. We are doubtful when
we either hesitate to make any judgement at all or make a judgement but with misgivings
that the opposite may be true. If we make the judgement with fear that opposite may be
true, we assent to one side, but our judgement is only a probable opinion. There are varying
degrees of probability, running all the way from sight suspicion to the fringes of certainty.
The fact that people differ in their levels of sensitivity to moral values gives habitual
characteristics to their judgements of conscience strict or lax, tender or tough, fine or
blunt, delicate or gross, according as they are inclined to perceive or habitually overlook
various moral values. A perplexed person is one who cannot make up his or her mind and
remains in a state of indecisive anguish, especially if he or she thinks that whatever
alternative he or she chooses will be wrong. A scrupulous person torments himself or
herself by rehearsing over and over again doubts that were once settled, finding new
sources of guilt in old deeds that were best forgotten, striving for a kind of certainty about
one’s moral state that one simply cannot be a serious form of self-torture, mounting to
neurotic anxiety that is more of a psychological than an ethical condition. Such a person
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needs to learn, not to the distinction between right and wrong, which he or she may know
very well, but how to stop worrying over groundless fears, how to end ceaseless self-
examination and face life in a more confident spirit.

FOLLOWING THE JUDGEMENT OF CONSCIENCE

Having seen what conscience is and the forms it takes, we must now discuss our obligation
to follow what conscience approves. There are two chief rules, but each of them involves a
problem. The two rules are:
1. Always follow a certain conscience
2. Never act with a doubtful conscience
Always Follow a Certain Conscience
First, notice the difference in between a certain and a correct conscience. The term
correct to the objective truth of the person’s judgement; the person’s judgement of
conscience represents the real state of things. The word certain refers to the subjective
state of the person judging namely, how firmly assent to the judgement has been given,
how thoroughly fear of the opposite has been excluded. Obviously, the kind of certainty
meant here is there is a subjective certainty which can exist along with objective error. We
have two possibilities that need to be examined:
1. A certain and correct conscience
2. A certain and erroneous conscience
1. A certain and correct judgement of conscience really offers no difficulty. Our
obligation is clear. The person judges what conduct is required here and now. The
judgement is correct, and the person is certain of its correctness.
What degree of certainty is required to call our judgement certain? Traditionally it has
been said that prudential certainty is sufficient. Prudential certainty is not something
absolute. It is still a matter of degree. This kind of certainty excludes all prudent fear
that the opposite may be true, but it does not require us to rule out imprudent fears
based on bare possibilities. That is, the reasons are strong enough to satisfy a normally
prudent person on an important matter, so that the person would feel safe in practice
even though there is theoretically a chance of being wrong. He or she has taken every
reasonable precaution but cannot guarantee against rare contingencies and freaks of
nature. When there is a question of action, of something involving future consequences
some of which are dependent on the wills of other people, the absolute possibility of
error can never be wholly excluded; but it can be so reduced that no prudent person
who is free from neurotic anxiety would be deterred from acting through fear of it. A
prudent person, having investigated the case, can then say with prudential certainty
that this business venture is safe, that this person is guilty of a crime, that this
employee is honest. This degree of certainty, since it excludes all reasonable fear of
error, is much stronger than high probability, which does not exclude such reasonable
fear.
2. What happens when I have an erroneous conscience, that is, when I make a mistaken
or incorrect moral judgement? If I know my judgement may be wrong and I am able to
correct the possible error, then I have an obligation to do so before acting. Otherwise, I
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run the risk of doing moral evil. Obviously, if I make an error and do not know about
the error, I have no means of correcting it. Since my error and ignorance are
unavoidable because they are unknown to me, I act morally when I go ahead and follow
my judgement of conscience. My judgement is certain and correct as far as I am able to
know here and now so even if I do something objectively wrong, I am responsible for
what I do but am not morally blameworthy for having done it. Conscience is the only
guide a person has for acting here and now. If I were not obliged to follow my
conscience when my judgement is certain even though mistaken but not known to be
mistaken, then I would be forced to the absurd conclusion that I am not obliged to
follow my judgement of conscience when it is certain and correct.
A person’s willing the good depends on his or her understanding of that good. Whether
the judgement about the good is correct to what the intellect understands and presents
as good, and the act is bad if it consents to what the intellect understands and presents
as evil under guise of good. A person firmly convinced that an action is right is in fact
choosing what is thought to be evil whether it really is so or not. Such persons are not
responsible for the unknown error of judgement, but they are praiseworthy or
blameworthy for their choices of what they judged was good or evil.

Never Act with a Doubtful Conscience

We have seen that a person acting with a certain but unavoidably mistaken conscience
is avoiding moral evil as far as possible. The mistaken judgment is not person’s fault,
for the person has no reason to believe that the judgement is mistaken. But the same
cannot be said of one who acts with a doubtful conscience. This person has reason to
believe that the intended act may actually be wrong and yet is willing to go ahead and
do it anyway. True, the person is not certain about the wrongness, but such as a person
is not willing to take the means to avoid this probable wrongdoing by determining the
true nature of the act, if that is possible. This type of person acts without care for the
rightness or wrongness of acts. Even if the rightness or wrongness of acts. Even if the
act turns out to be objectively right, this is only accidental. Therefore, we may conclude
that one must never act with a doubtful conscience.
But, then, what should a person with a doubtful conscience do? The person’s first
obligation is to try to solve the doubt, to find out the true nature of the act. If I am a
person with a doubtful conscience, I must reason over the matter more carefully to see
whether I can arrive at certainty. I must inquire and seek advice, even the advice, even
the advice of experts if the matter is important enough and there are experts available
who can help me. I must investigate the facts of the problem and there are experts
available who can help me. I must investigate the facts of the problem and make certain
of them, if this is possible. I must use all the means that normally prudent people are
accustomed to use, in proportion to the importance of the problem. Before deciding on
an important course of action, business and professional people, for example, take a
great deal of trouble to investigate a case, to secure all the data, to seek expert advice,
besides thinking over the matter carefully themselves. The same degree of seriousness
and care is demanded in moral affairs.
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What if a prudentially certain conclusion cannot be reached by doing all of this? For
example, it may happen that the required information cannot be obtained because the
facts are not recorded the records are lost, the obligation remains obscure, the opinions
of the learned differ, or the matter does not admit of delay for further research. If one
should never act with a doubtful conscience, what can one do who is still in doubt? It
may seem that the answer is easy; do nothing. But often this approach will not help for
doing nothing can often have as many and as important consequences as doing
something. Surely omissions can be voluntary and the doubt may concern precisely the
question of whether we may morally refrain from acting in this case.
The answer to difficulty is that every doubtful conscience. That is, no one need ever
remain in doubt about what he or she must do. To see this, we must distinguish
between the direct method of inquiry and investigation, in which has just been
described, and the indirect method of forming our conscience by the use of reflex
principles. Note first, however, that we are not offered a choice between using the
direct or the indirect method. We must use the direct method first. Only when the
direct method yield no result may we use the indirect method.

FORMING ONE’S CONSCIENCE

The doubting person who has exhausted the direct method described above without
obtaining the knowledge he or she needs has a double doubt:
1. What is the actual truth about the matter in hand?
2. What is one obliged to do in such a situation?
The first question is theoretical doubt, and it was cannot be answered if the direct
method was used and failed to yield results. But the second question is a practical doubt,
and this question can be answered in every instance by use of the indirect method, which
we shall now describe.
Through many doubts are theoretically insoluble, every doubts is capable of being
solved practically. Any person can become certain of what he or she is morally required to
act, even while remaining in a state of unsolved theoretical doubt. Thus, though the
rightness or wrongness of the action may not be settled in the abstract, a person can
become prudentially certain of what he or she in these actual circumstances is obliged or
allowed to do and can therefore act with a certain conscience. What he or she determines
is the kind of conduct that is certainly right for a doubting person in this situation. This
process of solving a practical doubt without touching the theoretical doubt is called the
indirect method or forming one’s conscience.
The process of forming one’s conscience is accomplished by the use of reflex
principles, so called because we use them while reflecting on the state of doubt and
ignorance in which we now find ourselves. We have only two possible courses of action
open to us: “play it safe” or “take the easier way.” Since these two courses of action are
almost always opposite courses, may we take whichever we please in any case? No.
Forming one’s conscience by use of the indirect method consists in determining when to
“play it safe” and when to “take the easier way.” The two reflex principles we use are (1)
the morally safer course is preferable and (2) a doubtful obligation does not bind. We must
now examine each of these principles to determine when to use the one or the other.
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The Morally Safer Course

By the morally safer course is meant the course of action that more surely preserves
moral goodness and more clearly avoids moral wrong doing.
One is always allowed to choose the morally safer course of action. If I am not obliged to act
and simply am in doubt about whether this money is justly mine, I can simply refuse it. If a
person is certainly allowed to act but doubts whether he or she has an obligation to act, the
morally safer course is to do the act. If I doubt, for example, whether I have paid a bill, I can
offer the money and risk paying it twice. Sometimes neither alternative appears morally
safer and the obligation on each side seems equal; then we may do either.
We have an obligation to follow the morally safer course whenever we have a
known moral obligation to fulfil or an end (goal) that we ought to achieve to the best of our
power. The only doubt we have is about the effectiveness of the means to be used for this
purpose. The obligation we must fulfil or the end we ought to strive for places a further
obligation on us to use certainly effective means. A lawyer, for example, who has agreed to
take on a client and defend that client in court has a clear obligation to fulfil his or her
agreement to defend that client. That clear obligation places a further moral obligation on
the lawyer to use the most certainly effective means at his or her disposal to defend the
client. The lawyer must take the morally safer course when it comes to choosing the means
to fulfil his or her moral obligation to defend the client. In such cases, the doubt is solely
about a matter of fact, namely, which means will certainly fulfil, the moral obligation
incurred in agreeing to defend the client.

A Doubtful Obligation
There are other cases in which the obligation itself is the thing in doubt. Here we
have a different question. The morally safer course (our first reflex principle), though
always allowable, is often costly and inconvenient, sometimes physically more dangerous
and even heroic. Out of a desire to do the better thing we often follow the morally safer
course without question, but if we were to have an obligation to follow it in all cases of
doubt, life would become intolerably difficult. To be safe morally, we should have to yield
every doubtful claim to others who have no better right than we do, and so we would
become the victims of every cheat and swindler whose conscience is less delicate than
ours. Such difficulties are avoided by avoided by the use of the second reflex principle: a
doubtful obligation does not blind.
This second principle is applicable only when I doubt whether I am bound by a moral
obligation. My doubt of conscience concerns whether the act I am thinking of doing is one I
am obliged to do or obliged to avoid doing. The principle that a doubtful obligation does not
bind may be used in both of the following situations:
1. I doubt whether such an obligation exists or is genuine.
2. I doubt about how to interpret the obligation, that is, I doubt whether the existing
obligation binds me here and now.
I may doubt, for example, whether the fruit on my neighbor’s tree hanging over my fence
belongs to my neighbour or me, whether I am sick enough to be excused from going to
work today, whether the damage I caused was purely accidental or due to my own
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carelessness. We are assuming that there are in the examples questions of what is morally
allowed: am I allowed to pick up the fruit, to stay home from work, to refuse to pay the
damage? Is there any known moral obligation that is applicable to my case and that
certainly forbids my doing what I am thinking of doing? If the direct method fails to prove
any moral obligation, then I am justified in going ahead and doing these things on the
principle that a doubtful obligation does not bind. The reason behind this principle is that
an obligation must be certain in order to have binding force, and a doubtful obligation is
not sufficiently certain to bind the person about to act here and now. It is important to
remember that we are talking about situations here in which the person is sincerely
doubtful whether there is a moral obligation (principle or rule) that covers the case. If the
person is not doubtful, then this second reflex principle does not apply.
We must be careful to distinguish these doubtful obligation cases from those that
fall under the first reflex principle. If the obligation itself is the thing in doubt, then I am
not obliged. If the obligation is certain, I must follow the morally safer course and not use
doubtful means if certainly effective ones are available. I may not roll boulders down a hill
in the mere hope that they may not hit anyone on the road below, but I may cart off
boulders from property that is only probably mine. I may not leave poisoned food lying
about on the chance that no one would care to eat it, but I may manufacture clearly
labelled poison if such manufacture is probably forbidden. In the first instance there is no
doubt about the obligation: I am not allowed to jeopardize human life unnecessarily. It may
happen that no harm results from my acts but those acts are certainly dangerous, and so
the morally safer course must be chosen. In the second instances, the obligation not to
seize others’ property or not to manufacture dangerous products is of doubtful application
to my case, and I may morally go ahead and do a thing for a doubtful obligation does not
bind. However, if the manufacture of poison turns out to be forbidden by civil law, I would
be legally liable even though not morally fault.
How doubtful does the moral obligation have to be to lose its binding force? Must
the existence or application of the obligation be more doubtful than its nonexistence or
nonapplication, or equally so, or will any doubt suffice to exempt a person from the
obligation? Such questions were hody debated during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, though by moral theologians than philosophical ethicians. The view that
survived this debate as the most tenable in the theory and the only one workable in
practice is called probabilism. It does not refer to a weighing of probabilities on either side
of the case but rather requires me to have a solidity probable reason for thinking that a
moral obligation does not exist or does not apply to my case for me to be allowed to go
ahead and to do the act. Solid probability means that the reasons against the obligation’s
existence or applications are not frivolous or fictitious but genuine and weighty, even
though they may be somewhat less so than the reasons in favour of the obligation. No
judgement can be certain if there are genuine and weighty reasons against it. If it is not
certain, it is doubtful, and if it is doubtful, it does not bind. To list all the reasons on both
sides and weigh their relative merits is often a hopeless task, baffling the best experts. The
average person has neither time nor knowledge nor ability for such a complete
comparison. In practice, choices must be made promptly and yet be made with a certain
conscience. The theory of probabilism enables a person to do so by saying that a moral rule
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does not oblige when where are solid reasons for thinking that either does not exist or
does not apply to the person’s case here and now.
One final caution is in order: we have been dealing with moral obligation and not
with obligations that stem from civil law. The second reflex principle that a doubtful
obligation does not bind does not apply to cases of civil law. Ignorance may be an excuse in
some cases of civil law, but ignorance of the law is almost never an excusing condition
before the civil law. Once a civil law has been passed and put on the books the
presumption is that the citizens know the law as it applies to them. We have a moral
obligation to obey civil laws that are just. We shall discuss this matter in the chapter on
government.

CONCLUSION
The whole matter of forming one’s conscience may seem to involve a great deal of
subtlety, as if we were whittling down moral obligation to its lowest terms. It this not
contrary to moral virtue and personal honor, straightforward simplicity and sincerity? In
an answer, the first thing to note I that we can always follow the morally safer course. But
in ethics we must study not only what is the virtuous and better, the nobler and more
heroic thing to do, but also exactly what a person is strictly obliged to do. A generous
person will not haggle over good works, but a reasonable person will want to know when
he or she is doing something that is strictly a duty (carrying out a clear moral obligation)
and when he or she is being generous.
Accurate moral discrimination is also important is judging the conduct of others. In our
personal lives we may be willing to waive our strict rights and to go beyond the call of
duty, but we have no business imposing on others an obligation to do so. The borderline
between right and wrong is often difficult to determine. It is certainly foolish to skirt it too
closely; but we are not allowed to accuse another person of wrong-doing if he or she has
not truly done wrong. This is another reason why we need to detail these principles very
carefully.

SUMMARY
Morality refers to be rightness or wrongness of human acts. We speak of objective or
subjective morality accordingly as it overlooks the particular characteristics of the doer of
the act and his or her circumstances or else take them into consideration. The norm of
subjective morality is the evaluative judgement of conscience.
Conscience is not a special faculty but a practical function of the intellect, under the
impulse of the desire to do the right and good, the judges the concrete act of an individual
person as morally good or evil. The reasoning used by the intellect in doing this is a form of
deduction. The major premise is an accepted moral value or principle, the minor premise is
an application of the value or principle to the case at hand, hand and the conclusion is the
evaluative judgement of conscience itself.
Conscience functions both as guide to future acts and as judge of past acts. A correct
conscience judges good as good and evil as evil; an erroneous conscience judges good as
evil or evil as good. A certain conscience judges without doubt or fear that the opposite is
true. A doubtful conscience either makes no judgement or judges with fear that the
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opposite is true. Conscience is said to be strict or lax according as it tends to perceive or

overlook various moral values.
Always obey a certain conscience even when it is unknowingly or unavoidably
mistaken. A certain and correct conscience is the clear and proper judgement about one’s
moral duty or obligations. Prudential certainty, the exclusion of any prudent fear of the
opposite, is all that can be expected in moral matters. A certain but erroneous conscience
must also be followed because the agent cannot distinguish it from a correct conscience
and has no other guide; the act is subjectively right even if objectively wrong.
Never act with a doubtful conscience. A person who acts with doubtful conscience is
willing to do an act whether it is wrong or not, refusing to take the means to avoid doing
moral evil.
A person in doubt must first use the direct method of inquiry and investigation to dispel
the doubt. That is, the person must reason over the matter more carefully, inquire and seek
advice of experts if possible, and investigate the facts of the problem to make certain of
them if possible—in short, use all the means a normally prudent person would use in
proportion to the importance of the problem. If the direct method yields no results, the
indirect method of forming one’s conscience may be used. This consist in solving not be
theoretical doubt (what is the actual truth?), for that is what cannot be solved if the direct
method fails, but in solving the practical doubt alone (how should a doubting person act in
this case?). The practical doubt can always be solved by using one of two reflex principle;
1. The morally safer course is preferable. This course is always allowable but
sometimes is burdensome. It must be used if the case concerns not the existence or
application of an obligation but the effectiveness of the means used to fulfil a certain
moral obligation or attain an end that must certainly be attained.
2. A doubtful obligation does not bind. This principle may be used only when there is a
question of the obligation itself, when either the existence or application of an
obligation is genuinely in doubt.
Probabilism is the name given the claim that to bind, an obligation must be certain,
and no obligation can be certain if there are solidly probable reasons against it no
matter how strong the probability, that is, the reasons for it, may also be. It is
practically impossible to weigh the degrees of probability on every side completely,
so probabilism holds that such a comparison is really necessary.
The purpose of this practical study of conscience is not to whittle down moral
obligation but to help us make accurate moral discriminations both about ourselves
and about others.