Melanie A.

Galedo June 08, 2019

BSN 11-G

BIOETHICS

DIFFERENT KINDS OF CONSCIENCE

Antecedent conscience- The judgment of a person deciding on a moral matter prior to acting on it.
Antecedent conscience either commands or forbids, counsels or permits the performance of an act.

Example: Maria is the only daughter of her parents. And one day she came home late because of a project.
When she arrive home her mom is quite furious of what happened and start scolding Maria. Maria is very
tired and irritated because the project is still not done. But rather talking back to her mother. She hug her
and say sorry of what she did.

Consequent conscience- The judgment of the mind on the morality of an action already performed. The
conscience either approves what has been done, giving peace to the mind and spiritual joy, or disapproves
of what was done, thus causing remorse and a sense of guilt.

Example: Anna has an exam today, and she didn’t even study for today exams. The only things she solution
for not to fail is to cheat with her friend Remi. When the test is done, and the score came out. She and Remi
got the highest score in the class but Anna is not happy because she knows what she did was wrong .

Right/True conscience- The mind making a correct moral judgment on some action either to be performed
or already done. When the conscience is true, a person's subjective judgment corresponds to the objective
fact that a particular human act is morally good or morally wrong.

Example: Andy sees a wallet in an open locker next to his in the lobby locker area. He takes it out an finds
P500 bill in it. The wallet does not belong to any of his friends. He is tempted to take the P500, but decides
that this would be stealing. He puts the wallet back in the locker and closes it. Andy chose correctly. He knows
that theft is wrong and that it destroys trust. His conscience was correctly formed and led him to choose the
value of honesty.

Erroneous/False conscience- The judgment of the mind when it wrongly decides that something is lawful but
that in fact is unlawful, or vice versa. The error may be due to the false principles used or because the mind
was darkened or confused in its reasoning process.

Example: Barbara went to a party and got drunk. (This is serious matter because a person cannot think
rationally or choose freely. Something essential has been destroyed). When she went to the party, Barbara
honestly didn’t see anything wrong with drinking. Later, when she discussed her behavior with her parents,
she claimed that no one ever told her that drunkenness was seriously wrong.

Certain conscience- A state of mind when it has no prudent fear of being wrong about its judgment on some
moral issue and firmly decides that some action is right or wrong.
Example: Rose is a 19 year old girl that got pregnant and her family don’t know about it and will surely get
angry if they do. The only solution of her problem is to abort the child. But she deeply know that it is a great
sin before God itself and it is immoral. Later that day she tells her parents what happened and keep the baby

Doubtful conscience- A state of mind when it cannot certainly decide for or against a course of action and
leaves the person unsure about the morality of what one is to do, or what one may have done.

Example: Jennie is a mom of three, and she doesn’t have a job to feed her daughters. Later that day her friend
came to her and tell her she have a job and surely will get a money within a day. She knows that her friend
means. Jennie doesn’t wanna do it but if she don’t her daughters will starve.

Lax conscience- Lax denotes something that is lenient or loose. A lax conscience would then signify as having
a poor sense of what is morally right or morally wrong. This is a state of mind that tends to select the easy
way out and make excuses for mistakes.

Example: George copies homework from his friends, makes cheat sheets for tests, and plagiarizes materials
for his class papers. His does this in all his classes. When discussions about cheating come up in class, he
mentally blocks them out. He once told a friend, “No one is going to tell me what to do.”

REACTION/DISCUSSION

When speaking of the conscience, I remember a famous TV commercial about how a certain mother
was choosing a brand of soap for her family. In that commercial, while the mother was deciding, a part of her
being, some form of voices poke to her, telling her that the brand of soap that she was about to choose is
not the best for her family. The voice told her to choose brand of soap that would remove 99.9 percent of
germs. If we watch Philippine television a lot, I think this commercial sounds familiar. In fact, some other
commercials nowadays are based on this concept. The human conscience develop as a mature conscience,
they start directing their actions more from within that tells us what is right and what is wrong. It works like
that some part of us that could speak to us and warn us of danger which we might have experienced in the
past or reason with us so that we would continue with a certain course of action.

The conscience is our internal witness bearer. It is our capacity to "judge ourselves”. We become
aware of our deeply held moral principles, we are motivated to act upon them, and we assess our character,
our behavior and ultimately our self against those principles. We take reflection about ourselves as moral
persons and about our moral conduct. It became a way to examine ourselves as if we are were our own inner
judge. It is sometimes misunderstood or most often been associated with negative feelings such as shame,
guilt, fear, contrition. But to think of it, conscience became more than that it became a sense of duty.
According to this understanding, conscience motivates us to act according to moral principles or beliefs we
already possess. Conscience so understood “establishes a general sense of moral obligation in the individual’s
consciousness”. It became our compass, our traffic light, and our navigator, that’s how important conscience
is it makes us whole and be the person we choose to be today.