THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSCIENCE AND THE MORAL CONSCIENCE BOTHERS SOME PEOPLE. The Conscience Is A Bothersome Aspect Of Being Human When Not Cleared Of All Guilt Or Sense Of Wrongdoing. Although, some people prefer to kill their conscience because that way they can kill others without feeling remorse.

What is the relationship between the Psychological conscience and Moral Conscience?

Happy Riches, Answered Jan 6

The terminology sounds like somebody seeking to be novel and looking for an idea to write a thesis. A distinction could be made between a conscience that is moral and one that is distorted—thereby psychological. Psychology is the study of the human personality after all.

Strictly speaking, our conscience is the inner recognition of right and wrong. Our conscience refers to the relationships that we have with others and operates from knowledge; not from irrational instinct, nor from the sympathetic nervous system, nor the parasympathetic nervous system.

From a evolutionary psychological perspective, there may be some novel application by incorporating the autonomous nervous system as part of a concept that is defined as the psychological conscience. But, in doing this, we would be changing the definition of the term conscience.

If there is to be any relationship between a moral conscience and a fabricated conscience, which somehow incorporates other components of a person’s constitution, then it would be a case of creating a fake conscience and seeing how this compares with a true conscience.

Freud has already construed a definition for a fake conscious and called it the superego.

The superego is the ethical component of the personality and provides the moral standards by which the ego operates. The superego's criticisms, prohibitions, and inhibitions form a person's conscience, and its positive aspirations and ideals represent one's idealized self-image, or “ego ideal.” Sigmund Freud, 1921

The superego is a distorted consciousness that reflects cultural mores or personal upbringing that conflicts with the true conscience—a feature of our constitution Freud did not want to acknowledge, for he saw the superego as the developed conscience.

The true conscience is an inherent recognition of right and wrong that enables us to determine whether what we do to others is acceptable if done to our selves.

People raised in communities where they are taught standards of behavior that constitute distorted morality (where murder, stealing and false witness are permitted) have internalized friction within their psyche, which they need to suppress somehow, or be continually troubled. In suppressing their true conscience, people develop a false conscience.

The superego of Freud, which is the false conscience, is at odds with the true conscience. Although, Freud did not see it this way.

The true conscience is the defining element within humans that separates us from animals of instinct that function from their autonomous nervous system. This instinctive behavior is the result of how their peculiar behaviors have been programmed. Hence, birds will dance and put on a display when courting, and insects exhibit surprisingly complicated routines—such as the two spider wasps I have observed digging a hole for its egg and the spider upon which it will feed.

Here is another instance of a spider wasp at work preparing a cache for its offspring to munch.

There is no conscience involved, there is no conceptualizing required, the wasp is programmed to what she does. The wasp does not require a committee to find out whether she should paralyze the spider or discus the ethics of whether the spider is suitable or not. The spider wasp does what it is programmed to do, nobody taught it.

Humans, unlike the wasp, are programmed to conceptualize and recognize the value of relationships, which is why we have the capacity to understand morality. The ability to conceptualize also means we have the ability to distort reality and create our own deceptions—this is how the fake conscious (the superego) is born. Conceptualization also requires a process of distinguishing and contrasting that which is perceived as a concept. Hence, humans are programmed to learn. This ability to learn is the key feature of our programming and originates from our ability to distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, truth from falsehood. Unfortunately, being able to conceptualize leads into imaginary situations that develops confirmation bias and differing worldviews—the result of a distorted conscience.

The relationship between what one might term a psychological conscience and our true conscience depends upon the degree of deception a person is prepared to entertain. If a conscience is defined as the capacity to discern a right relationship based on an absolute moral code, then psychology already has a definition for the conscience. It is defined as the inner recognition of right from wrong.

The True Conscience Is One That Authentically Acknowledges Right From Wrong