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Lesson 6
Lesson 6
Example:
Anger, involves a person condemning or feeling rage
on the basis of reason, (a belief that a wrongly injury
has occurred).
Emotions and Reason
In religious ethics, there is a debate:
over the voluntariness of emotions.
Is a person responsible for his emotion?
the relationship of emotions and actions
Perhaps one can have a duty to engage in loving
action, but it is more problematic to suppose that a
person can have a duty to feel love as an emotion)
ethical status and definition of emotions
what is the difference between love and lust?
Conscience
Conscience
is the power to discern
what appears to be
morally right or wrong.
is an inner feeling or
voice viewed as acting as
a guide to the rightness or
wrongness of one's
behavior.
Conscience
• The function of the conscience in
ethical decision making tends to
complicate matters for us.
• The commandments of God are
eternal, but in order to obey them we
must first appropriate them internally.
• The “organ” of such internalization has
been classically called the conscience.
• Some describe this nebulous inner
voice as the voice of God within.
Conscience
The conscience is a mysterious part of
man’s inner being.
Within the conscience, in a secret hidden
recess, lies the personality, so hidden that
at times it functions without our being
immediately aware of it.
Encountering the conscience can be an
awesome experience.
The uncovering of the inner voice can be,
as one psychiatrist notes, like “looking into
hell itself.”
Conscience
The conscience can be a
voice from heaven or hell;
it can lie as well as press us
to truth.
It can speak out of both
sides of its mouth, having
the capacity either
to accuse or to excuse.
Conscience
• The conscience is important, but not normative.
• It is capable of distortion and misguidance.
• Though the conscience is not the highest tribunal
of ethics, it is dangerous to act against it.
• Martin Luther “To act against conscience is
neither right nor safe”?
Conscience
• If the conscience can be misinformed or
distorted,
The sin resides not in the lipstick but in the intent to act against
what one believes to be the command of God.
Role of Mental Frames in Moral
Experiment
Framing describes how our responses
to situations, including our ethical
judgments, are impacted just by how
those situations are posed or viewed.