To what extent if at all, should conscience be ignored when making ethical decisions?

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To what extent if at all, should conscience should be ignored when making ethical decisions?

        There are many aspects of the world we live in today that prevent from doing morally wrong actions such as fines, disownment, religious teachings and prison but possible the strongest of them all is our conscience. Conscience is the final decision maker. In which it is able to distinguish between approval disproval of our own actions. The dictionary provides two main definitions on conscience a sense of right and wrong and the other simply a feeling of guilt, these both governs a person’s thought and actions. There are two main types of conscience, which reflects on a person behaviour. Judicial Conscience, which is critically assessing and evaluating one’s past actions and Legislative Conscience which is deciding what needs to be done in the future. However, conscience is not as simply as choosing the good angel over the devil sitting on opposite ends of the shoulders. As sometimes we have ignore the good angel.

        Joseph Butler was an Anglican priest and theologian. He saw conscience as the final moral decision-maker. For example when someone sees someone getting assaulted it would be our conscience that make sure we intervene in the final decision. Butler believed that humans were influenced by two basic principles, self-love and benevolence Conscience directs us towards focusing on the happiness or interest of others and away from focusing on ourselves. Like Aquinas, Butler held that conscience could both determine and judge the integrity and wrongness of actions. However, Butler went on to state that conscience comes into play in situations without any introspection and has the ultimate authority in ethical judgements. For Butler, conscience gives us instant intuitive judgements about what we should do. He believed it was our guide to moral behaviour, put there by God, and it must be obeyed.

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Augustine of Hippo believes God gives humans innate knowledge of good and evil through conscience. What makes a person virtuous (or righteous) is following their conscience. This can be done only through the grace of God (i.e. Only believers can do this). Without this grace humans cannot be good. Even though an unbeliever may appear to do good their actions would not be considered Good.

According to Butler it is imperative not to ignore our conscience as if we were to ignore our conscience then we would be ignoring God. Butler believed that conscience had been placed in humanity by ...

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